An Attic Cistern Front at the British Museum

1928 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
W. R. Lethaby

In the Third Graeco-Roman Room is a long relief, numbered 2154 and entitled a Votive Relief. It is described in the catalogue (1904) as ‘Relief, perhaps votive, with Dionysos receiving a libation. The central group consists of Dionysos and a Maenad…. Behind the Maenad a large crater stands on the ground…. A moulding appears to have been tooled away above…. May be as early as the end of the fourth century. Athens: Elgin Collection. Height 2 feet 7 inches; length 5 feet 8 inches. Found among the ruins of the theatre of Herodes Atticus. Formerly in the possession of N. Logotheti. Stuart, ii, pp. 23, 45.…’Close to the ‘crater’ a hole about an inch in diameter has been carefully bored through the marble—so carefully that the presumption is that it is part of the original work, although it is suppressed in the old illustrations and is not mentioned in the descriptions. On looking behind the relief it at once appears that material at the two ends and the bottom has been cut away. The remnants of the parts which have been cut off suggest the two ends and bottom of a water trough or cistern. The hole mentioned above is situated an inch or so above what remains of the bottom, and thus conforms to the general tradition of stone water troughs such as several of granite which I have recently seen in Dartmoor farm-yards. From these evidences and the appropriate size it may not be doubted that the relief is the front of a water cistern.

1955 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 155-155
Author(s):  
Marcus N. Tod

Soon after the publication (JHS LXXIII 138 ff.) by Mr. D. E. L. Haynes and myself of the portrait-herm of Rhoummas recently acquired by the British Museum I was informed by Mr. Michael R. E. Gough that he had found in his copy of LS some correspondence, dated 1910, relating to the herm. The dossier, which he kindly sent to me for examination, consists of three letters and two post-cards addressed by Arthur Sidgwick in March 1910 to the ‘Rev. A. S. Lamfrey, Grammar School, Ashford, Kent’, who had evidently written asking the meaning of the word μαρμαρόπαιστος. Sidgwick's provisional rendering was ‘struck with a stone’, but he asked for a copy of the whole inscription, and on receiving it sent it to Professor Percy Gardner, who replied that ‘the forms of the letters of the inscription seem to belong to the third or fourth century, not earlier.


Author(s):  
Daniel Martin Feige

Der Beitrag widmet sich der Frage historischer Folgeverhältnisse in der Kunst. Gegenüber dem Gedanken, dass es ein ursprüngliches Werk in der Reihe von Werken gibt, das späteren Werken seinen Sinn gibt, schlägt der Text vor, das Verhältnis umgekehrt zu denken: Im Lichte späterer Werke wird der Sinn früherer Werke neu ausgehandelt. Dazu geht der Text in drei Schritten vor. Im ersten Teil formuliert er unter der Überschrift ›Form‹ in kritischer Abgrenzung zu Danto und Eco mit Adorno den Gedanken, dass Kunstwerke eigensinnig konstituierte Gegenstände sind. Die im Gedanken der Neuverhandlung früherer Werke im Lichte späterer Werke vorausgesetzte Unbestimmtheit des Sinns von Kunstwerken wird im zweiten Teil unter dem Schlagwort ›Zeitlichkeit‹ anhand des Paradigmas der Improvisation erörtert. Der dritte und letzte Teil wendet diese improvisatorische Logik unter dem Label ›Neuaushandlung‹ dann dezidiert auf das Verhältnis von Vorbild und Nachbild an. The article proposes a new understanding of historical succession in the realm of art. In contrast to the idea that there is an original work in the series of works that gives meaning to the works that come later, the text proposes to think it exactly the other way round: in the light of later works, the meanings of earlier works are renegotiated. The text proceeds in three steps to develop this idea. Under the heading ›Form‹ it develops in the first part a critical reading of Danto’s and Eco’s notion of the constitution of the artworks and argues with Adorno that each powerful work develops its own language. In the second part, the vagueness of the meaning of works of art presupposed in the idea of renegotiating earlier works in the light of later works is discussed under the term ›Temporality‹ in terms of the logic of improvisation. The third and final part uses this improvisational logic under the label ›Renegotiation‹ to understand the relationship between model and afterimage in the realm of art.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Brent Arehart

Abstract On the basis of two neglected testimonia, this short note argues that the terminus ante quem for Philippos of Amphipolis (BNJ 280) should be moved forward to the third century or to the early fourth century c.e. if not earlier.


1963 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Greenfield

SummaryTwo shrines of circular and polygonal shape, probably part of a larger group, were erected early in the second half of the third century A.D., and occupied until late in the fourth century. The shrines occur in an area of widespread settlement dating from the late Iron Age until the end of the fourth century. Many objects of bronze and iron of ritual significance, together with a large number of votive deposits and coins, were recovered from the circular shrine. Miss M. V. Taylor's discussion of the principal objects appears on pp. 264–8.


1926 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Iliffe
Keyword(s):  

B.M. B46. The catalogue describes this vase thus:—Acquired 1867: Blacas Coll. Dinos. Ht. 13 in. Diam. 12½ in. Slightly restored, imperfectly fired. Around rim, chain of lotus and buds; on shoulder, tongue-pattern. Two friezes: above, banquet scene, of seven couches, on each of which two male banqueters; between the two end couches, group of five servants, in attendance on the banqueters; below, animal frieze. Beneath this a broad zone of black, and on bottom, polypus pattern.The principal scene shows a series of seven couches, on each of which recline two bearded male figures, facing to 1.; seven of them wear wreaths. Alongside each couch stands a table, bearing viands for the banquet. From 1. to r., the first, fourth, sixth, tenth and thirteenth hold out phialae in varying attitudes; the third, eleventh and fourteenth hold out kerata, in the act of drinking, or to have them refilled, while the seventh and eighth also have each a keras; the fifth holds out a kantharos; the twelfth raises an apparently empty r. hand; the second also raises his r. hand, but the object he holds is hidden by the first figure; the ninth plays the double flute.


1996 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. Stead ◽  
N. D. Meeks

In 1960 and 1961 Ole Klindt-Jensen published two short notes about a golden statuette of a Celtic warrior, soldered to a fine brooch. He was convinced that the warrior did not belong to the brooch, and thought that they had been combined fairly recently. J. M. de Navarro added a comment to the 1961 note, concluding: ‘My impression (from photographs only) is that the brooch might date from the fourth century BC and the figure not before the latter half of the third or the second century BC, i.e. that it was added later.’ Klindt-Jensen's notes were accompanied by plates, and at the same time another photograph was published on the front cover ofCelticum, volume I. A decade later the brooch was shown at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, and at the Hayward Gallery, London, as item no. 35 in the Early Celtic Art exhibition held in 1970. The catalogue entry was based on Klindt-Jensen's note, but no photograph was published. In the mid 1970s R. M. Rowlett prepared a paper on the authenticity of the brooch, including metal analyses and a comparison of its proportions with those of some La Tène II brooches: Rowlett considered that the figure of the warrior was contemporary with the rest of the brooch, which he accepted as an authentic antiquity. His paper was eventually published about twenty years later.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Clarke

Outside the north gate of Venta Belgarum, Roman Winchester, a great cemetery stretched for 500 yards along the road to Cirencester. Excavations at Lankhills from 1967 to 1972 uncovered 451 graves, many elaborately furnished, at the northern limits of this cemetery, and dating from the fourth century A.D. This book, the second in a two-part study of Venta Belgarum, which forms the third volume of Winchester Studies, describes the excavations of these burials and analyses in detail both the graves and their contents. There are detailed studies and important re-assessments of many categories of object, but it is the information about late Roman burial, religion, and society which is of special interest.


1927 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Sanders

Papyrus 1571 of the Michigan Collection was bought in Cairo in 1924 in a large purchase, which was allotted to the contributing institutions by Mr. H. I. Bell of the British Museum. Many documents in the Michigan part of the purchase came from the Fayûm, but no further evidence is obtainable regarding the place of origin of this fragment. It came to us in three pieces, of which one was only partly unfolded and all were so dirty as to be rather illegible, but the papyrus was already designated as a portion of Acts and dated in the fourth century.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Hardie

This essay aims to redefine the place of the Camenae within the evolution of Roman carmen. It analyses the documented association of the purifying fons Camenarum with the cult of Vesta and by extension with the salvific prayer-carmina of her virgines; and it takes the Camenae from the archaic origins of their cult, with reflections on Etruscan and other territorial interests, to their appearance in the epic laudes of men in the third and second centuries BC. The identification of Camenae and Muses, it is argued, pre-dates Livius Andronicus' “Camena,” and is best understood as a component of the Numa-legend as it emerged towards the end of the fourth century. Pythagorean Muse-cult, reflecting the Muses' traditional interest in civic homonoia (concord) and law-making kings, played a part; and an agent of change was the reformist Appius Claudius Caecus, author of the first attested Roman carmen. The wider context lies in the cultural interplay of Rome, Etruria, and Greek southern Italy in the early and middle Republic.


1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. K. Johnson

A summary view of the main evidence at our disposal may be soon obtained. Three traditions appear at the outset. The first depends on a MS. once at Mainz, and now no longer extant, but of which part, at any rate, still existed in the sixteenth century; the second on an eleventh century MS. at Bamberg; and the third on a number of later MSS. in Rome, Florence, Paris, the British Museum, Oxford, Holkham, and other places. The fact that (at any rate for preliminary investigation) these three traditions must be regarded as separate may be seen first from the parts of the decade which they each omit.


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