scholarly journals In Bed with Mother: Sexual Dreams in Artemidorus’ Interpretation of Dreams

Monitor ISH ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-207
Author(s):  
Maja Sunčič
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Dream Interpretation ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
Scientific Level ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Antiquity

The paper examines Artemidorus’ treatise Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirokritika), the only surviving dream book from Greco-Roman antiquity. Being a professional dream interpreter, Artemidorus is our main source for the significance of dreams and for the process of their interpretation in antiquity. In accordance with tradition, the interpretation of dreams is represented as a form of divination and as such as a religious practice, widely accepted and used by the general public, though frowned on by educated critics and philosophers as a fraudulent and unreliable practice. Contrary to other ancient sources, which mainly report on the dreams of the elite, Artemidorus’ book interprets the dreams of ordinary people as well. After a preliminary outline of its characteristics, the paper examines the sexual dreams in Artemidorus’ treatise in the context of ancient dream interpretation, pointing out its differences from Freud’s influential approach to the interpretation of dreams. With Freud’s work, the interpretation of dreams in fact reached the scientific level which Artemidorus had striven for in his treatise. Nevertheless, Freud’s approach and method cannot be applied to the interpretation of Artemidorus’ treatise as a whole or of its chapters on sexual dreams. The differences between Artemidorus’ and Freud’s approaches to the analysis of sexual dreams are clearly perceived in the chapters translated and published below, which analyse sexual relations including incestuous, unlawful and unnatural practices.

An Ancient Dream Manual

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Thonemann
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Dream Interpretation ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Road Map ◽  
The Social ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Life Career

Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (‘The Interpretation of Dreams’) is the only dream-book which has been preserved from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Composed around AD 200, it is a treatise and manual on dreams, their classification, and the various analytical tools which should be applied to their interpretation. Artemidorus travelled widely through Greece, Asia, and Italy to collect people’s dreams and record their outcomes, in the process casting a vivid light on social mores and religious beliefs in the Severan age. This book aims to provide the non-specialist reader with a readable and engaging road-map to this vast and complex text. It offers a detailed analysis of Artemidorus’ theory of dreams and the social function of ancient dream-interpretation; it also aims to help the reader to understand the ways in which Artemidorus might be of interest to the cultural or social historian of the Graeco-Roman world. The book includes chapters on Artemidorus’ life, career, and worldview; his conceptions of the human body, sexuality, the natural world, and the gods; his attitudes towards Rome, the contemporary Greek polis, and the social order; and his knowledge of Greek literature, myth and history. The book is intended to serve as a companion to the new translation of The Interpretation of Dreams by Martin Hammond, published simultaneously with this volume in the Oxford World’s Classics series.

Classics and Media Theory

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Of Greece

The aim of this volume is to introduce a largely neglected area of existing interactions between Greco-Roman antiquity and media theory. It addresses the question of why interactions in this area matter, and how they might be developed further. The volume seeks to promote more media attentiveness among scholars of Greece and Rome. It also aims to create more awareness of the presence of the classics in media theory. It foregrounds the persistency of Greco-Roman paradigms across the different strands of media theory. And it calls for a closer consideration of the conceptual underpinnings of scholarly practices around the transformation of ancient Greece and Rome into ‘classical’ cultures.

Pity the Women and Children: Punishment by Siege in Josephus’s Jewish War

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caryn A. Reeder
Keyword(s):  
Greco Roman ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Roman Antiquity

Abstract This paper analyzes the neglected theme of suffering women and children in Josephus’s Jewish War. Women and children did suffer the effects of sieges in Greco-Roman antiquity, but historiographers also use the stories of their suffering to interpret warfare. Josephus participates in this tradition by using the imagery of suffering women and children to condemn the Jewish rebels, a presentation which is also influenced by Deut 28 and Lamentations. The warnings against rebellion in J.W. 2.237, 400, and 5.418 heighten the rhetorical power of this condemnation by offering the alternative of surrender for the sake of women and children.

scholarly journals CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL, HIERARCHICAL AND EGALITARIAN: SOCIAL-POLITICAL USES OF THE CONCEPT OF “HOME” IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Phronimon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Strijdom
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
House Churches ◽  
The Family ◽  
George Lakoff ◽  
The One ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Point Of Departure

The cognitive linguist George Lakoff has argued that in the human brain two concepts of the family are mapped onto two contrasting political concepts, which reveal two kinds of systemic morality: a hierarchical, strict and disciplining father morality of conservatives on the one hand, and an egalitarian, nurturing parent morality of progressives or liberals on the other. Taking Lakoff’s thesis as point of departure, I offer a critical comparison of social-political uses of the concept of “home” in the early Roman Empire and Pauline Christianity. For this case study I engage primarily with the work of John Dominic Crossan, a prominent scholar of early Christianity within its Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. Although “home” does not constitute the focus of his analysis, a close reading of his oeuvre does allow us to identify and highlight this as a crucial theme in his work. The focus will be on the patriarchal home under Greco-Roman imperial conditions as model of the imperial system, the Pauline egalitarian concept of the Christian home and house churches, and the deutero-Pauline return to the imperial model. By comparing these case studies from another epoch and another culture, thevalidity of Lakoff’s thesis will be tested and our understanding of the concepts “liberal” and “conservative” will be enriched.

Before Animal Sacrifice, A Myth of Innocence

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 357-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ullucci
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
Meat Eating ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Interpretive Model ◽  
Field Of Cultural Production ◽  
Roman Antiquity

AbstractAnimal sacrifice was one of the most pervasive and socially significant practices of Graeco-Roman religion. Yet, numerous Greek and Latin writers tell of a golden before the advent of sacrifice and meat eating. In this idealized world, humans lived at one with the gods and animal sacrifice did not exist. Such texts are often seen as part of a wider ancient critique of Greco-Roman religion in general and animal sacrifice in particular. This interpretive model, largely sprung from Christian theologizing, sees animal sacrifice as a meaningless and base act, destined to be superseded. As a result of this 'critique model', scholars have not asked what the myth of a world without sacrifice means in a world in which sacrifice predominated. This paper seeks to correct the above view by analyzing these texts as instances of created myth. It approaches each occurrence of the myth as an instance of position-taking by a player in the field of cultural production. The paper seeks to further a redescription of Greco-Roman antiquity by revealing the variety of ancient positions on sacrifice and their strategic use by competing cultural producers.

«Poem Should Thrill»: on the Rough Sonnets of Neoclassic Poets in the Context of the Totalitarian Regime

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Vakulyk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Severe Form ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
General Direction ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The World ◽  
Roman Poetry ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Roman Antiquity

Abstract. The works of Ukrainian neoclassicists as the representatives of the era of «Executed Renaissance», who left an invaluable heritage and made a tremendous contribution to the enrichment of not only Ukrainian but also world literature, have repeatedly become the subject of scholars’ research. The purpose of the study is to analyze the sonnet as a phenomenon that appeared in the first third of the last century: what caused its «rigidity» and «severity», as well as what is its poetic beauty. Materials and methods of research. This article is based on the analysis of archival materials, letters, memoirs, the press of the twenties («Chervonyi Shliakh», «Nova Hromada», etc.), published and unpublished editions of works by Ukrainian neoclassicists. The severity of life dictated its own rules, its own style and its own norms. Sonnets of Ukrainian neoclassicists were also rigit or «strict». Comparative-historical and descriptive methods are used in the work. Discussion. The representatives of the informal society «neoclassicism», which was formed in Ukraine in the 20s of the 20th century, professed an aesthetic concept of spiritual renewal of the writer’s consciousness and the nation in general, disciplined the cardiocentric element of the «executed Renaissance» generation of artists, combining the Dionysian tradition with the Apollonian culture. The aesthetic platform that united the neoclassicists was the love to the word, to the strict form, to the great heritage of the world literature. They realized the sonnet as a «strict style», as a «severe» form. Ukrainian neoclassicists set the task of creating a «great style of Ukrainian literature» based on Greco-Roman antiquity and European Parnassians; hence there is a cult of strict classical forms (sonnet, octave, Alexandrine verse, elegiac distich). When Ukrainian neoclassicists spoke, they did not declaim ideological and aesthetic manifestos. Ukrainian neoclassicists, in contrast to the Russian ones, were distinguished by greater creative conservatism: if the latter put Pushkin as a role model, the first were oriented towards Greco-Roman antiquity and French Parnassians (the first edition of Ukrainian neoclassicism was «The Anthology of Roman Poetry» by M. Zerov, 1920), strictly adhered to canonical classical forms. Conclusions. The genre canon of the sonnet implies conceptuality that must be realized through a certain compositional rhythm according to the universal scheme: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. Such scheme of the sonnet dramatic line development «tells» the poet the most general direction in the development of thought, mood, and contemplation. The sonnet allows to resolve contradictions. Consequently, it is a balance between the stable and the variable, a dialogue with yourself, with the world; this is the beauty of dramatic trembles of poetic content. Finally, this is a distinctive stylistic thinking which attracts primarily the poets of the rationalist mindset.

Sainte-Beuve and Greco-Roman Antiquity. Ruth E. Mulhauser

1971 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-71
Author(s):  
Richard T. Bruère
Keyword(s):  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Antiquity

The Vow-Curse in Ancient Jewish Texts

2019 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-357
Author(s):  
Avigail Manekin-Bamberger
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Binding Mechanism ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
Semantic Expansion ◽  
Interpersonal Situations

AbstractUttering a vow was an important and popular religious practice in ancient Judaism. It is mentioned frequently in biblical literature, and an entire rabbinic tractate, Nedarim, is devoted to this subject. In this article, I argue that starting from the Second Temple period, alongside the regular use of the vow, vows were also used as an aggressive binding mechanism in interpersonal situations. This practice became so popular that in certain contexts the vow became synonymous with the curse, as in a number of ossuaries in Jerusalem and in the later Aramaic incantation bowls. Moreover, this semantic expansion was not an isolated Jewish phenomenon but echoed both the use of the anathema in the Pauline epistles and contemporary Greco-Roman and Babylonian magical practices.

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