Pagan-mythological statuary in sixth-century Asia Minor

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Ine Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor

Mary as Intercessor in Byzantine Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
Bronwen Neil
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Natural Object ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Cult Of Mary ◽  
Early Byzantine

Mary’s intercessory role appeared in the early Byzantine church in the sixth century, if not earlier, and popular belief in her power to aid sinners, even after death, only increased in the Middle Byzantine centuries, following broader trends in the literature and art of that period. These texts and images from the Eastern churches of Constantinople, Asia Minor, Egypt, Georgia, and Syria reveal a growth in affective piety, which highlighted Mary’s motherhood and compassion, making her a natural object for personal devotion. Mary, the human mother of God, was an accessible figure whose very accessibility made her uniquely placed to intercede between sinful believers and God and his son, Jesus Christ. The evidence presented here for the development of affective piety in the Byzantine cult of Mary as intercessor reveals that Byzantine beliefs and practices prefigured the same trend in the medieval West by several centuries.

The cypriote surrender to Persia

1987 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 154-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jay Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
History Of

At present there appears to be general agreement that Cyprus entered the Persian Empire some time between c. 545 and 539. It will be argued here that this event did not occur until 526 or 525. The point involves other, much broader issues. Any power wishing to control Cyprus must possess a substantial navy. When, then, did Persia acquire sufficient naval strength to control the eastern Mediterranean? This last problem in turn raises the question of when the Persians annexed the countries of the Levant and Asia Minor from which they drew the whole of their fleet. Finally, because elaborate theories concerning the development of sixth century Cypriote sculpture have been built upon the conclusion that Cyprus submitted to Persia c. 545, a revision of that date will have important repercussions upon the history of Cypriote art.

The Heirs of Odysseus, 800 BC–550 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Far East ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
The West ◽  
Recent Immigrants ◽  
The North ◽  
New Settlements

Whether the early Greeks possessed as powerful a sense of identity as the Phoenicians is far from clear. Only when a massive Persian threat appeared to loom from the east, in the sixth century, did the diverse Greek-speakers of the Peloponnese, Attika and the Aegean begin to lay a heavy emphasis on what they had in common; the sense of a Hellenic identity was further strengthened by bitter conflicts with Etruscan and Carthaginian navies in the west. They knew themselves as distinct groups of Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Arcadians, rather than as Hellenes. There were the Spartans, proud inheritors of the Dorian name, who saw themselves as recent immigrants from the north. There were the Athenians, who insisted they were the unconquered descendants of more ancient Greeks. There were the Ionians, thriving in the new settlements across the Aegean, in Chios, Lesbos and on the Asian coast. The ‘Greeks’ cannot be identified simply as those who took delight in tales of the Greek gods and heroes, which were common currency elsewhere, especially among the Etruscans; nor would the Greeks have wished to recognize as fellow- Greeks all inhabitants of what we now call Greece, since they identified among the population of the islands and coasts strange remnants of earlier peoples, generically called ‘Pelasgians’ or ‘Tyrsenians’; besides, the Greek-speakers were themselves moving outwards from the Aegean and Peloponnese towards Asia Minor, where they would remain for over two and a half millennia, and towards Sicily, Italy and North Africa. How, when and why this great diaspora was created remains one of the big puzzles about the early Iron Age Mediterranean. What is certain is that it transformed the area, bringing goods and gods, styles and ideas, as well as people, as far west as Spain and as far east as Syria. The Greeks remembered these movements of people and things by way of often complex and contradictory tales of ancient ancestors who spread their seed across the Mediterranean: whole peoples at times reportedly boarded ships to be carried across distances of many hundreds of miles.

scholarly journals On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: a new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Tim Penn ◽  
Ben Russell ◽  
Andrew Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Carpathian Basin ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Sources Of Influence

Abstract Archaeological evidence and the text of the Strategikon show that it was only in the late sixth century AD that the Roman-Byzantine military adopted the stirrup. It is now widely argued that the Avars, who settled in the Carpathian basin in the sixth century, played a key role in introducing iron stirrups to the Roman-Byzantine world. However, the evidence to support this assertion is limited. Although hundreds of stirrups have been found in Avar graves in the Carpathian basin, very few stirrups of sixth- or seventh-century date are known from the Roman-Byzantine empire - no more than seven - and only two of these are of definitively Avar type. The text of the Strategikon, sometimes argued to support this Avar source, can be interpreted differently, as indeed can the archaeological evidence. While the debate about the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup has focused mostly on finds from the Balkans, two early stirrups are known from Asia Minor, from Pergamon and Sardis. This paper presents a third, previously unpublished stirrup, from a seventh-century deposit at Aphrodisias in Caria; this is the first stirrup found in Asia Minor from a datable context. Here we present this find and its context, and use it to reconsider the model of solely Avar stirrup transmission that has dominated scholarship to date. So varied are the early stirrups that multiple sources of influence, Avar and other, and even a degree of experimentation, seem more likely to underpin the Roman-Byzantine adoption of this technology.

Paganism in the Greek World at the End of Antiquity: The Case of Rural Anatolia and Greece

1985 ◽  
Vol 78 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 327-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank R. Trombley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Geographic Distribution ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Rural Districts ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Greek World

I propose to discuss what might be called the “mechanics of conversion” in the countryside of the sixth-century later Roman Empire. This process consisted fundamentally in implanting monasteries in districts where few villages had been Christianized, or where the population was nominally Christian but so badly instructed that earlier pagan cult practices persisted. There is considerable evidence for rural conditions in the hagiographic lives of monks and in the ecclesiastical histories of this period. One of the principal difficulties in this sort of study is the geographic distribution of the sources. Hagiographic texts are, in effect, local histories, largely confined to the environs of the monastery. Thus, we are reasonably well informed about western Asia Minor and Galatia in the sixth century, for which sources like this exist, but hardly know anything about paganism in Greece until the tenth century, when monasteries finally began to appear in rural districts.

scholarly journals The Distribution of Attic Vases

1905 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 224-242
Author(s):  
G. M. A. R.
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Gradual Decrease ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Aegean Islands ◽  
Ceramic Art ◽  
The World ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
History Of

One of the most interesting phenomena in the history of ceramic art is the absorption of the market of the world by Attic ware. The sixth-century tombs of Italy, Sicily and elsewhere show a gradual decrease in importations from Corinth, Chalcis, Cyrene and Ionia, and by the time of the beginning of the fifth century the Attic black- and red-figured ware has acquired a complete monopoly. The area over which these Attic vases were distributed comprises almost the whole of the world as known at that time—Greece Proper, the Aegean Islands, the Cyrenaica, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Crimea and above all Italy and Sicily. The question suggests itself how far this large and varied export was influenced by the special demand in various localities; how far, in fact, each locality had its own definite needs for special vase forms, which the ceramic trade of Athens was to supply.

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