Monumenta Graeca et Romana: Mutilation and transformation : damnatio memoriae and Roman imperial portraiture

Monumenta Graeca et Romana: Mutilation and transformation : damnatio memoriae and Roman imperial portraiture PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004135774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
The condemnation of memory inexorably altered the visual landscape of imperial Rome. This volume catalogues and interprets the sculptural, glyptic, numismatic and epigraphic evidence for "damnatio memoriae" and ultimately reveals its praxis to be at the core of Roman cultural identity.

Monumenta Graeca et Romana: Mutilation and transformation : damnatio memoriae and Roman imperial portraiture

Monumenta Graeca et Romana: Mutilation and transformation : damnatio memoriae and Roman imperial portraiture PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004135774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
The condemnation of memory inexorably altered the visual landscape of imperial Rome. This volume catalogues and interprets the sculptural, glyptic, numismatic and epigraphic evidence for "damnatio memoriae" and ultimately reveals its praxis to be at the core of Roman cultural identity.

Monumenta graeca et romana

Monumenta graeca et romana PDF Author: H. F. Mussche
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789004059320
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Polis and Personification in Classical Athenian Art

Polis and Personification in Classical Athenian Art PDF Author: Amy C. Smith
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004214526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In this study Dr Smith investigates the use of political personifications in the visual arts of Athens in the Classical period (480-323 BCE). Whether on objects that served primarily private roles (e.g. decorated vases) or public roles (e.g. cult statues and document stelai), these personifications represented aspects of the state of Athens—its people, government, and events—as well as the virtues (e.g. Nemesis, Peitho or Persuasion, and Eirene or Peace) that underpinned it. Athenians used the same figural language to represent other places and their peoples. This is the only study that uses personifications as a lens through which to view the intellectual and political climate of Athens in the Classical period.

The Emperor Commodus

The Emperor Commodus PDF Author: John S. McHugh
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473871670
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This historical biography goes beyond popular legend to present a nuanced portrait of the first century Roman emperor. Commodus, who ruled over Rome from 177 to 192, is generally remembered as a debaucherous megalomaniac who fought as a gladiator. Ridiculed and maligned by historians since his own time, modern popular culture knows him as the patricidal villain in Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator. Much of his infamy is clearly based on fact, but John McHugh reveals a more complex story in the first full-length biography of Commodus to appear in English. McHugh sets Commodus’s twelve-year reign in its historical context, showing that the ‘kingdom of gold’ he supposedly inherited was actually an empire devastated by plague and war. Openly autocratic, Commodus compromised the privileges and vested interests of the senatorial clique, who therefore plotted to murder him. Surviving repeated conspiracies only convinced Commodus that he was under divine protection, increasingly identifying himself as Hercules reincarnate. This and his antics in the arena allowed his senatorial enemies to present Commodus as a mad tyrant—thereby justifying his eventual murder.

Naming and Mapping the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean

Naming and Mapping the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean PDF Author: Thomas Galoppin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311079845X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1274

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Book Description
Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions. Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.

Ushering in a New Republic

Ushering in a New Republic PDF Author: Trevor S. Luke
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472052225
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
The ancient Romans are well known for their love of the pageantry of power. No single ceremony better attests to this characteristic than the triumph, which celebrated the victory of a Roman commander through a grand ceremonial entrance into the city that ended in rites performed to Rome’s chief tutelary deity, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on the Capitoline hill. The triumph, however, was only one form of ceremonial arrival at the city, and Jupiter was not the only god to whom vows were made and subsequently fulfilled at the end of a successful assignment. Ushering in a New Republic expands our view beyond a narrow focus on the triumph to look at the creative ways in which the great figures of Rome in the first century BCE (men such as Sulla, Caesar, Augustus, and others) crafted theological performances and narratives both in and around their departures from Rome and then returned to cast themselves in the role of divinely supported saviors of a faltering Republic. Trevor S. Luke tackles some of the major issues of the history of the Late Republic and the transition to the empire in a novel way. Taking the perspective that Roman elites, even at this late date, took their own religion seriously as a way to communicate meaning to their fellow Romans, the volume reinterprets some of the most famous events of that period in order to highlight what Sulla, Caesar, and figures of similar stature did to make a religious argument or defense for their actions. This exploration will be of interest to scholars of religion, political science, sociology, classics, and ancient history and to the general history enthusiast. While many people are aware of the important battles and major thinkers of this period of Roman history, the story of its theological discourse and competition is unfolded here for the first time.

Reuse and Renovation in Roman Material Culture

Reuse and Renovation in Roman Material Culture PDF Author: Diana Y. Ng
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108676057
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This book explores the spoliation of architectural and sculptural materials during the Roman empire. Examining a wide range of materials, including imperial portraits, statues associated with master craftsmen, architectural moldings and fixtures, tombs and sarcophagi, arches and gateways, it demonstrates that secondary intervention was common well before Late Antiquity, in fact, centuries earlier than has been previously acknowledged. The essays in this volume, written by a team of international experts, collectively argue that reuse was a natural feature of human manipulation of the physical environment, rather than a sign of social pressure. Reuse often reflected appreciation for the function, form, and design of the material culture of earlier eras. Political, social, religious, and economic factors also contributed to the practice. A comprehensive overview of spoliation and reuse, this volume examines the phenomenon in Rome and throughout the Mediterranean world.

Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity

Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity PDF Author: Assoc Prof Marina Prusac
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9781409470335
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The phenomenon of iconoclasm, expressed through hostile actions towards images, has occurred in many different cultures throughout history. The destruction and mutilation of images is often motivated by a blend of political and religious ideas and beliefs, and the distinction between various kinds of ‘iconoclasms’ is not absolute. In order to explore further the long and varied history of iconoclasm the contributors to this volume consider iconoclastic reactions to various types of objects, both in the very recent and distant past. Whilst the texts are addressed primarily to those researching the Western world, the volume contains material which will also be of interest to students of the Middle East.

Celebrity, Fame, and Infamy in the Hellenistic World

Celebrity, Fame, and Infamy in the Hellenistic World PDF Author: Riemer A. Faber
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487505221
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This book traces the roots of modern notions of celebrity, fame, and infamy back to the Hellenistic period of classical antiquity, when sensational personages like Cleopatra of Egypt and Alexander the Great became famous world-wide.

Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder

Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder PDF Author: Nassos Papalexandrou
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477323635
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The eighth and seventh centuries BCE were a time of flourishing exchange between the Mediterranean and the Near East. One of the period’s key imports to the Hellenic and Italic worlds was the image of the griffin, a mythical monster that usually possesses the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. In particular, bronze cauldrons bore griffin protomes—figurative attachments showing the neck and head of the beast. Crafted in fine detail, the protomes were made to appear full of vigor, transfixing viewers. Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder takes griffin cauldrons as case studies in the shifting material and visual universes of preclassical antiquity, arguing that they were perceived as lifelike monsters that introduced the illusion of verisimilitude to Mediterranean arts. The objects were placed in the tombs of the wealthy (Italy, Cyprus) and in sanctuaries (Greece), creating fantastical environments akin to later cabinets of curiosities. Yet griffin cauldrons were accessible only to elites, ensuring that the new experience of visuality they fostered was itself a symbol of status. Focusing on the sensory encounter of this new visuality, Nassos Papalexandrou shows how spaces made wondrous fostered novel subjectivities and social distinctions.