Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 332-337.

Cynthia Freeland’s investigation of four kinds of ‘fidelity’ in portraiture is cut across by more general philosophical concerns. One is about what might be called the expression of persons--the persons or ‘inner selves’ of portrait subjects and of portrait artist: whether either is possible across each of the four kinds of fidelity, and whether these two kinds of expression are in tension. More fundamental is the problem of telling how self-expression is at all possible in any of these (...) forms. Finally, she wonders how photography affects all these questions. This comment addresses portraiture not so much in terms of the four fidelities, but with another quartet of concepts: four ordinary types of ‘display’, in terms of which we see how artists’ self-expression is possible in all these forms, also including photography. Its key idea is that portraits are displays simply by being pictures or sculptures, which are kinds of artifacts, hence things that we perceive as having intentional affordance: that is, as being intentionally made ‘for’ something. (shrink)

La tête A 148 du Musée de Ténos, trouvée à Kionia, site du sanctuaire de Poséidon et d'Amphitrite, a été identifiée, au début du siècle, comme un portrait de Domitia. Ce portrait représente en réalité Agrippine l'ancienne, comme le montre la comparaison avec les répliques déjà connues du même type, dit « du Capitole ». La tête de Ténos, qui date du règne de Claude, se rattache au courant classicisant de la sculpture impériale de Grèce propre.

Brigitte Bourgeois and Philippe Jockey Gold and Marble: the Gilded Hellenistic Sculptures of Delos p. 331-349 The investigation we are conducting on the polychromy of the Hellenistic sculptures of Delos has enabled us to add to the corpus of gilded marble works and to refine the typology. A visual examination of the sculptures through a video-microscope, combined with an analysis of the remains isolated by this means under X-fluorescence, has revealed the existence of three large types of gold (...) leaf gilding on marble at Delos in around 100 BC: totally gilded statues, works on which the gilding forms only an added colouring to the general polychromy, and works that we propose to call "chrysochromes", which present a singularity not hitherto recognised of a very bright polychromy on the clothed parts associated with gold on the nude parts. Among the number of important results of this enquiry may be counted the revelation of the overall gilding on the Delian copy in the National Museum at Athens of the Polyclitus Diadumenus, carved and gilded in imitation of a gilt bronze or even a gold statue. Such a use of gold leaf gilding on the Delos marbles calls in any case for a reconsideration of the question of the reception in antiquity of such works, as well as of such a success of gold at Delos and no doubt elsewhere in the Greek world in the same period. (shrink)

The north-east outskirts of the agora of Thasos III. 1 : the sculptures. The seventy fragments of sculpture – mostly carved on Thasos in the local marble – published here provide a representative selection of the finds made during excavations on the north-east outskirts of the agora of Thasos. Since a protobyzantine mansion has been built with materials taken from the ruins of the nearby agora, portraits-statues and offerings are the kinds of sculpture most represented. Except for a few better (...) preserved pieces, these fragments are of mainly archaeological interest, offering many insights into the techniques of ancient sculpture at different periods, especially regarding the initial stages of the sculptors’ work, indications as to the various tools used, the practice of piecing and repairs. (shrink)

La statue, monumentale, en marbre de Caïus Ofellius Férus n'avait pu être érigée et présentée depuis sa découverte en 1880 à l'Agora des Italiens à Délos. Sa restauration a été réalisée en septembre-octobre 87. Son principe : restituer à la sculpture ses aplombs d'origine, son maintien par un système léger rendant à l'œuvre sa lisibilité. Pour cela, deux barres en acier inox marine furent introduites dans le marbre, sur une longueur suffisante pour atteindre le centre de gravité placé très haut. (...) Malgré l'extrême difficulté de l'opération le forage fut réalisé sans risque pour l'œuvre au moyen d'une fore,use à outil tubulaire diamanté. Les barres ont été collées avec une résine époxyde et scellées dans un bloc de béton. L'Éphore des Cyclades Mme Zaphiropoulou a déterminé les proportions de ce socle. (shrink)

Anthropologists have defined iconatrophy as a process by which oral traditions originate as explanations for objects that, through the passage of time, have ceased to make sense to their viewers. One form of iconatrophy involves the misinterpretation of statues' identities, iconography, or locations. Stories that ultimately derive from such misunderstandings of statues are Monument-Novellen, a term coined by Herodotean studies. Applying the concept of iconatrophy to Greek sculpture of the Archaic and Classical periods yields three possible examples in which statues (...) standing in Greek sanctuaries may have inspired stories cited by authors of the Roman imperial period as explanations for the statues' identities, attributes, poses, or locations. The statues in question are the portrait of the athletic victor Milo of Croton at Olympia, a bronze lioness on the Athenian Acropolis identified as a memorial to the Athenian prostitute Leaina , and the Athena Hygieia near the Propylaia of Mnesikles. Inscriptions on the bases of Archaic and Classical statues in Greek sanctuaries typically named the dedicator, the recipient deity, and the sculptor, but did not include the subject represented or the historical occasion behind the dedication. These “gaps” left by votive inscriptions would only have encouraged the formation of iconatrophic oral traditions such as the examples examined in this article. (shrink)

This essay had its beginnings in my desire to reexamine the Arnolfini portrait from the perspective of Giovanna Cenami, the demure young woman who stands beside the cloaked and hated man on the fifteenth-century panel in London. Even though she shares the formal prominence with the man in Jan van Eyck’s unprecedented composition, she has been paid scant attention in the literature on the painting. I anticipated, as I began my work that inspection of the female subject of the (...) panel would, of necessity, amend the authoritative count of the Arnolfini portrait that Panofsky first published in 1934. That narrative, which focused on the event portrayed, had been recited to me by my teachers as an example of interpretive truth; I had committed it to memory as a model of our discipline’s search for meaning. I never dreamed back then that it might be “wrong.” Yet, the material I encountered as I pursued my inquiry into Giovanna’s life contradicted Panofsky’s assumptions on several key points; amendment alone would not do. It seemed necessary for me to challenge the venerable interpretation others were starting to question,4 even though two generations of students, including my own, had learned from it all they thought there was to know about “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait.” 4. See, for example, Peter H. Schabacker, “De Matrimonio ad Morganaticam Conracto: Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini’ Portrait Reconsidered,” Art Quarterly 35 : 375-98, hereafter abbreviated “DM”; Lucy Freeman Sandler, “The Handclasp in the Arnolfini Wedding: A Manuscript Precedent,” Art Bulletin 66 : 488-91, hereafter abbreviated “H”; and Jan Baptist Bedaux, “The Reality of Symbols: The Question of Disguised Symbolism in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” Simiolus 16 : 5-28, hereafter abbreviated “RS.” Linda Seidel, associate professor in the department of art at the University of Chicago, is the author of Songs of Glory , a study of twelfth-century French architectural sculpture. She is currently completing a work on medieval doorway design as an art of entry and pursuing a collaborative project with Michael Camille and Robert Nelson, Medieval Art and Its Audiences. (shrink)

At Aristophanes, Equites 230–2, one of the slaves who speak the prologue informs the audience that, when the Paphlagonian appears onstage, his mask will not resemble him, for the σκεoπoιoí were afraid to make one that depicted him accurately. In an important article, K. J. Dover argued that it must in fact have been very difficult to create easily recognizable portrait-masks, and suggested that the joke in Eq. 230–2 may be that the Paphlagonian's mask is horribly ugly but allegedly (...) still nowhere near ugly enough. In response, D. Welsh, following an anonymous ancient commentator on Lucian, argued that Cratinus fr. 228 K-A shows that the historical Kleon had strikingly unattractive eyebrows. Had anyone wished to caricature the demagogue's physical appearance, therefore, he coule easily have done so, and portrait-masks may not have been so uncommon after all. Welsh's argument is at first glance quite appealing, and has been endorsed without further comment or argument by Sommerstein and Storey. I suggest, however, that the ancient commentator was confused, and that Cratinus’ remark is much more easily explained by reference to what is known about the use of facial expression as a communicative strategy in classical and early Hellenistic Athens, particularly as it appears in the comic poets. Kleon's eyebrows were probably no more ugly than those of anyone else, although he may have used them in an offensive way, and as Dover saw long ago, Eq. 230–2 cannot be taken as evidence for the use of portrait-masks on the late 5th-century comic stage. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ovid, Art, and Eros PAUL BAROLSKY OVIDIO, AMORI, miti e altre storie or Ovid: Loves, Myths, and Other Stories is the copiously illustrated catalogue to the monumental exhibition mounted in 2008–2009 at the Scuderie del Quirinale, in Rome, in celebration of the great Roman poet and his world. This handsome tome is many books in one: a beautiful album of color plates illustrating a wide range of fascinating objects, (...) an overview of Ovid’s life, works and influences—a book for amateurs and specialists alike, a book to delight and instruct. The book includes paintings and sculpture but also pottery, coins, and jewelry. There is something for everybody here. Ovidio is divided into relatively brief sections written by numerous scholars who treat such topics as Ovid and myth, Ovid the love poet, Ovid in exile, Ovid and Augustan Rome, Ovid and the figurative arts, and Ovid in the seventeenth century. The book’s attention to illustrated editions of Metamorphoses, and especially the Ovide moralisé, is notable and refreshing. I think it fair to say that the exhibition and its catalogue are, not surprisingly, dominated by Metamorphoses and the ways in which artists illustrated its stories over the centuries. The myths of Venus and Adonis, Narcissus and Echo, Icarus and Daedalus, and Jupiter and Europa are among the numerous Ovidian stories that get extensive treatment here. We need to recall that no ancient author in the Hellenic tradition is so copiously illustrated as is Ovid—a fact that is Ovidio, amori, miti e altre storie, ed Francesca Ghedini et al. Rome 2018, 310 pages; isbn 9788856906486; €33.15. arion 27.2 fall 2019 easily taken for granted. A consummate story teller, Ovid inspired the pictorial tales of Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, among other masters. Often in this book, works of mythological art are seen in the context of Ovid, even when there is no specific association between image and text. Such is the case when, for example, we encounter the well-known Praxitelean Aphrodite pudica in the Uffizi which inspired Botticelli’s similar Aphrodite now in the Musei Reali of Turin. There is nothing that links the statue and the painting to Ovid other than the fact that their makers, like the poet, write about the goddess of love. Ever so many mythological works suggest the arousal of desire. The Praxitelean Aphrodite modestly covers her body with both of her hands. Understandably, since according to an ancient tale, a young man was so aroused by the statue that he left a stain upon her. In short, we are in the realm of erotic art. The Hellenistic statue of Leda and the Swan in the archeology museum of Venice is an excellent example of erotic art featured in this book, even though Leda is mentioned only in passing in Metamorphoses. She seems to swoon in rapture as the bird (Jupiter in avian guise) slithers between her legs, beak seeking lips. Scarcely resisting, Leda reaches ambiguously downward as if in search of something, and we can well imagine what that might be. That her lower hand is invisible contributes to its suggestiveness. Leda’s upper hand is pressed against the swan’s sinuous neck, by no means a gesture of resist170 ovid, art, and eros Figure 1: Leda and the Swan. Venice, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 2018. Eric Vandeville / akg-images. ance, I believe, even though in the myth she is taken by force. What we see is what the Ovid catalogue calls a “voluptuous amplexus.” The story of Leda and the Swan is forever told by painters in various erotic ways. When, later in the Renaissance, Correggio pictures the momentous event he shows the swan mounting Leda who, in this case, receives the bird in a seated position. As the bird engages the nymph, feathers pressed against her inner thigh, the swan, as in the ancient statue, seeks out her mouth with his beak—a juxtaposition as phallic as it is oral. The Leonardesque smile of Leda betokens not fear or violence but pleasure—a decidedly carnal pleasure. In a different context, Vasari wrote that Correggio painted not colors but flesh. When Leonardo himself pictured Leda, he delicately rendered the... (shrink)

A pioneering work in the history of philosophy, the ancient text of the Lives presents engaging portraits of nearly a hundred Greek philosophers. It blends biography with bibliography and surveys of leading theories, peppered with punchy anecdotes, pithy maxims, and even snatches of poetry, much of it by the philosophers themselves. The work presents a systematic genealogy of Greek philosophy from its origins in the sixth century BCE to its flowering in Plato's Academy and the Hellenistic schools. In this (...) fully up-to-date and accessible translation, based on the most accurate texts and the latest advances in scholarship, Stephen White provides a valuable resource for students and scholars of ancient philosophy. Highlights include extended treatment of the "seven Sages" (Book 1), Socrates and his Socratic followers (Book 2), Plato (Book 3), Aristotle and his school (Book 5), Diogenes the Cynic (Book 6), Stoicism (Book 7), Pythagoreans (Book 8), Pyrrhonian skepticism (Book 9), and Epicureanism (Book 10). (shrink)

The marble head inv. no. 882 in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki came from the north terrace of the forum ofthe ancient city, where in 1924 and 1973 a sumptuous building of Imperial times was excavated, believed to have been a library (building B). It yielded a large number of important sculptures, including the famous statue of Athena Julia Domna, as well as others which were cultic. The technical characteristics indicate that head 882 must have belonged to a colossal acrolithic (...) statue of the tebennophoros/toga wearing type. The person depicted is identified with the emperor Titus, since the typological characteristics of the head, particularly the curly locks of the hair, point to well known portraits of this emperor. This Greek work presents certain peculiarities in the rendering of the cheeks and eyes that suggest to us a comparison with the head of the statue of Titus from Olympia, which is attributed to an Attic workshop. The interpretation of building Β as a library may be doubted in view of a series of observations about its architectural type. Furthermore its connection with a triple apse building that was excavated in contact with it and belonged to the same building programme suggests that we have to do with buildings of a cultic character arranged in order on a separate terrace, as was the case in the forum at Philippi. It is probable that at least some of the sculptures excavated with the head of Titus had been erected in these buildings. The colossal acrolithic statue of the emperor from which the head came may plausibly have been erected in a temple dedicated to the cuit of the Flavian emperors, which was perhaps founded on the occasion of the deification of Vespasian by his son Titus (79 AD). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reason and Emotion. Essays in Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical TheoryEve Browning ColeJohn M. Cooper, Reason and Emotion. Essays in Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xiii + 605. Cloth, $75.00.This collection of essays spans 27 years of John Cooper's career as an interpreter of ancient philosophy. Its earliest essay, "The Magna Moralia and Aristotle's Moral Philosophy," already shows Cooper's distinctive approach; (...) he seeks to discover "a simpler and more natural way" (200) to understand the discrepancies between this small treatise and Aristotle's major ethical works than by the comparatively convoluted theory of Dirlmeier. In seeking this simpler and more natural interpretive route, Cooper attends to "the philosophical content of the work" (202), rather than considerations of style and linguistic usage. He concludes with frank discussion of the problems which his interpretation cannot solve; these are dismissed with characteristic exasperation-italics: "... one must not expect to explain everything..." (210). He confines his rougher polemical points to footnotes (Dirlmeier "doesn't even face the question squarely" in note 19, hence he is "wildly off" in note 28). [End Page 430]These characteristics run through all the essays here collected. Only two of the 23 essays are previously unpublished: a reconsideration of Xenophon as a source on Socrates, and a treatment of pleasure and desire in Epicurus. Other essays take up moral problems examined by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and several Hellenistic philosophers or schools. A theme running through most if not all the discussions is the desire (shared by the ancient philosophers and by Cooper equally, it would seem) to develop and defend a viable eudaimonism. The relation between human goodness and human happiness must be shown to be one of extremely close affinity, such that the virtuous are also the happy, even in adversity. Thus though no attempt is made to connect the essays into a coherent argument leading to a global thesis about ancient moral philosophy, the book nevertheless contains the ingredients for such an argument and thesis. The book presenting such an argument and thesis could in some ways be both more elegant and more helpful than this collection; it could spend fewer of its pages in arguing against other interpreters over minor differences (the standard journal-article format for our time), more of its pages awakening the texts, eliciting their message, and presenting it in a form useful for guiding life. Perhaps Cooper will write such a book soon.But the present volume will certainly be of interest to scholars and students, who will find in it much to enjoy and ponder. Generally what is striking about Cooper's interpretations is their freshness. He is at his best when dislodging some stale orthodoxy. The essay on Xenophon's Socrates is a case in point. The portrait of Socrates which emerges in Xenophon's Memorabilia is usually taken to be far less accurate than that presented in Plato's earlier dialogues. The Memorabilia seldom appear on the required reading lists of Greek philosophy courses, nor does Xenophon's version of Socrates' approach to moral questions receive even a fraction of the scholarly attention devoted to Plato's early work. Cooper convincingly shows this neglect to rest on a prejudice. The Socrates of Xenophon's portrait addresses a different kind of audience than that of Plato; the difference in the style of questioning and in the topics discussed reflects the historical Socrates' sensitivity to his partners in conversation. He addresses them where they live (so to speak), and this makes him "all the more remarkable a person" (14).Two other strengths run throughout the essays here collected. No matter how intense the exegetical quibble may have become on any given page, Cooper is able to make a sudden soaring flight upward and provide a synoptic view of the broader philosophical terrain, both for any given philosopher and for that philosopher's contemporaries, predecessors, and successors. These flights are sometimes dizzying and often unpredictable, but always refreshing.In addition, Cooper is able to make connections with large issues in contemporary moral philosophy, relating the ancient controversies to their modern versions (John Rawls, Bernard Williams, Leo Strauss... (shrink)

Cet ouvrage de L.M. trouve son origine dans une dissertation intitulée Globalizing the Sculptural Landscapes of the Sarapis and Isis Cults in Hellenistic and Roman Greece soutenue en 2016 à Duke University. Reprenant le corps de certains articles publiés depuis cette date, l’A. se propose d’explorer les concepts de groupness, self-understanding, self-fashioning et self-location afin de mieux comprendre « how Isiac communities redefined Greek ethnicity for themselves ». Le propos, qui s’inscri...

Through the comparison with famous statues, Lycinus, in Lucian’s „Imagines“, makes a verbal portrait of a beautiful woman he has caught sight of. The portrait of her virtues is preceeded by a section where she appears with a book in her hands, while talking to someone. This paper argues that such a description is modelled on a specific iconographic scheme: after Lycinus’ verbal sculpture, the woman has actually become a statue. But she also has the limits of a (...) sculpture: although she is speaking, she cannot be heard. The following revelation of the woman’s identity, conveyed through an allusion to Xenophon’s tale of Panthea, serves the purpose of showing the superiority of literature over the visual arts: Xenophon’s account − a literary work − is said to be able to create what visual arts cannot, i. e. the illusion of sound. (shrink)

Lukas Nickel’s article “The First Emperor and Sculpture in China” in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has drawn significant attention to the issue of Hellenistic influence on the making of the terracotta warriors excavated from the mausoleum of the First Emperor of China. In the perspective of textual evidence, Nickel attaches much importance to the connection between the Chinese report of the twelve da ren 大人 in Lintao 臨洮 in the Hanshu and the account (...) of the construction of “altars” to the twelve Olympian gods by Alexander the Great at the easternmost point of his expedition to India in the Bibliotheca Historica. This coincidence suggests to Nickel that the twelve Big Men are a possible reference to large sculptural figures erected on the western border of the empire. This article aims to question this interpretation of the twelve da ren as sculptures in the Hanshu. A twofold examination of the textual and other historical sources will make clear that the twelve Big Men were mentioned not as huge statues but as exceptionally tall visitors, an exemplary omen related to human illness manifested in physical abnormality. (shrink)

Gordion, the principal city of Phrygia, was an important center for the worship of the major Phrygian divinity, the Great Mother of Anatolia, the Greek and Roman Cybele. Considerable evidence for the goddess's prominence there have come to light through excavations conducted at the site, first by Gustav and Alfred Körte and more recently by the continuing expedition sponsored by the University Museum in Philadelphia. These include sculptural representations of the goddess and numerous votive objects dedicated to her. The material (...) pertinent to the goddess and her cult in Gordion during the most prominent period of Phrygian culture, the eighth and seventh centuries BC, is similar to that from other contemporary Phrygian centers. Even after the loss of Phrygian political independence in the seventh century, the cult of the goddess in Anatolia continued to flourish, and the older traditions of iconography and votive types were maintained. During the Hellenistic period, however, we see a different version of the goddess at Gordion. The earlier Phrygian forms of cult image and votive were gone, and in their stead are figurines and votive objects which are clearly of Greek inspiration. The Mother goddess was still at home in Gordion—several stone and terracotta representations of her from this period attest to that—but her visual image had become thoroughly Hellenized. (shrink)

Ce recit de la vie d'Aristote montre assez bien que, même s'il est connu comme un des plus grands philosophes de tous les temps, il etait un veritable homme de science, au sens moderne du mot, un penseur, chercheur et professeur. Sous forme d'autobiographie, le present recit nous rappelle du même souffle, grâce à des reperes historiques bien definis, tout ce que nous devons à la culture grecque : l'academie, l'ethique, les sculptures d'Aphrodite, le theâtre, les sciences, sans oublier les (...) bases servant à l'etude de nos systemes politiques. Vingt-quatre siecles avant nous, Aristote s'etonnait dejà de tout. Ami du conquerant Philippe de Macedoine, il a ete un professeur d'Alexandre dit Le Grand et il connaissait de pres Demosthene, que l'on donne lui aussi, avec le Romain Ciceron, comme l'un des deux plus grands orateurs de l'Antiquite. Cette biographie s'en tient strictement à des faits verifiables anterieurs à l'annee 322 avant notre ere, date de la mort d'Aristote. L'auteur, qui utilise un vocabulaire aussi pres que possible de sa source, ne pose aucun jugement sur sa personnalite ou sur ses oeuvres. Mais le portrait qui se degage de cette vie fera consensus : Aristote etait heureux. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 121.3 (2000) 493-497 [Access article in PDF] Louis H. Feldman. Josephus's Interpretation of the Bible. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998. xvi 1 837 pp. Cloth, $75. (Hellenistic Culture and Society, 27) Flavius Josephus has long been famous for his first book, The Jewish War, the primary source for the history of the Jews from the Maccabean Revolt to the (...) destruction of the Temple. Less well known is his later history Jewish Antiquities, but it represents a more accomplished author and involves his own paraphrase of Jewish history found in the Hebrew Scriptures.Feldman addresses two questions to the Jewish Antiquities. First, to what extent has Josephus made his own creative contribution to the biblical history of the Jews? Second, to what extent has Josephus provided a distinguishable and consistent point of view? Feldman seeks to determine how Josephus handles source material (where we have his biblical source for comparison), in the hope that this will enable scholars to better evaluate The Jewish War.The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with Josephus as historian. [End Page 493] Portions of this section were published earlier in the volume Mikra of the series Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum (1988), but the extensive revision and fourfold expansion represent the fruit of Feldman's labor since then. His labor is also found in the second part, which contains twelve "portraits" from a series of previously published studies (newly revised) on major figures in biblical history: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, and Daniel. (The other portraits and additional studies have been republished in Studies in Josephus' Rewritten Bible [Brill 1998].) The primary focus of each portrait is the model of the Greek hero, beginning with genealogy and wealth and elaborating on the five virtues. Other subheadings include apologetic and stylistic motifs appropriate to each character, and Josephus' removal of theological problems and other difficulties. The following remarks will focus on part 1, which distills the themes of each portrait and does so in the broader context of all his portraits.Feldman argues that the historiography of Josephus is based on the school of Isocrates, with its fictitious speeches and epic proportions, and that of Aristotle, with its scientific classification of lives, culminating in the styles of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Nicolaus of Damascus. As historian, Josephus is more concerned with commenting on the situation of his own day than explaining the past. Accordingly, the genre of "apologetic biography" best describes his Jewish Antiquities.In chapter 2, "Josephus as Rewriter of the Bible," Feldman analyzes Josephus' dependence on the textual traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Greek Septuagint, and the Aramaic targumim. He concludes that the models of the Septuagint and the targumim most resemble Jewish Antiquities, but Josephus has combined their method with that of Greek historians, most notably of Thucydides. Feldman notes that Josephus' self-consciousness of being a prophet and a priest affects his historiography. As a priest, Josephus felt authorized and qualified to interpret the sacred Scriptures. As a prophet, though not of the stature of biblical literary prophets, Josephus is commissioned to play an active role in the politics of his day and to explain the current condition of the Jews in the aftermath of the destruction of their Temple.Chapter 3, "Qualities of Biblical Heroes," provides a thematic synthesis of the different hero studies. The heroes of the Jews are no less noble than the heroes of the Greeks and Romans: their genealogies are illustrious, their births portentous, and their persons endowed with virtuous qualities. Josephus takes great care to exemplify the cardinal virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, piety) in his encomia of the biblical characters.Chapter 4, "Josephus as Apologist to Non-Jews and to Jews," is perhaps the most interesting to historians and advances Feldman's goal of analyzing The Jewish War. Josephus draws on Gentile sources to establish the historicity of biblical events, even when they disagree with the biblical account. He attributes the evil inflicted on the Jews... (shrink)

Modern scholars have been concerned with the hostility shown to Alexander by the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Two literary portraits have been distinguished, the Peripatetic and the Stoic, the former deriving from Theophrastus' book on Callisthenes, or starting with this work the Peripatetics worked out a theory of and applied it to Alexander, in order to belittle his achievements. It was a case of giving sophisticated expression to the kind of crude resentment expressed by Demades.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Main Street as Art Museum:Metaphor and Teaching StrategiesElizabeth (Beau) Vallance (bio)In truth, walking down Main Street in many American small towns today is rather like walking through an art museum whose walls have mysterious gaps where paintings have been removed for cleaning. Maybe more accurately, walking down Main Street can be rather like walking through the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston after a Vermeer, two Rembrandts, and eleven (...) other artworks were stolen in 1990: since the Gardner's charter does not allow it to rearrange its holdings, the resulting gaps remained with only explanatory notes in their too-large spaces on my last visit there. A town I know well has a disturbing number of empty storefronts, identified with only the faint outlines of their former names, their windows holding explanatory notes in the form of signs proclaiming that they are for sale or rent. Thanks to Wal-Mart and other big-box stores thriving in a distinctly nonpedestrian strip north of town, the commerce that once thrived on Main Street has died or been removed to new locations, and the once-lively street-level shop windows that testified to downtown liveliness for foot traffic are now empty, awaiting new life as, very likely, antique shops or restaurants.But in principle, a walk down Main Street can be very much like a stroll through a museum gallery—visually rich, inviting unexpected choices, aesthetically rewarding. This article explores the concept of shop windows as visually ordered compositions much like paintings and other art objects and suggests some approaches to applying this concept in teaching a range of subjects and styles of art in both classrooms and actual museums. For the purposes of argument, we will assume that our mythical Main Street is alive [End Page 25] with businesses of many kinds, with the old-fashioned windows open to the street that allow us to "window shop" for many blocks. Some of my examples are drawn from the very enjoyable experience they still offer, of wandering from image to image, commenting as we go.Museum Visitors as Window-ShoppersConsider the behavior of the average museum visitor, a composite characterization drawn from my years as a museum educator and augmented by a few statistics on how people comport themselves in museums and other public places. The behavior of visitors in art museums is an especially clear case of how people observe deliberate compositions, for in art museums objects are typically arranged fairly sparely, with minimal crowding of the objects themselves, small labels that may or may not explain much about the painting or sculpture or silver tureen, good lighting, and a fairly hushed atmosphere, unless a crowd has gathered for a family festival or a major exhibition.Generally, people come to museums in pairs or small groups and not necessarily with a clear plan beyond perhaps seeing a particular favorite work of art or generally catching the highlights of the collection. Their purpose may be social as much as specifically educational, and those who come with companions tend to chat a bit as they walk through the collection. Generally, other things being equal, they turn to the right on entering the building.1 After that, however, visitors become unpredictable, and they meander among the objects in ways the museum cannot control unless visitors are following a live tour guide or a printed self-guiding tour that recommends stopping at selected objects in a predetermined order. Visitors may move to a large object located in the center of the gallery (such as a medieval suit of armor, an Egyptian mummy case, or an enormous painting on a freestanding wall partition), or to a case filled with many small precious-looking objects (such as pre-Columbian gold jewelry from Peru, or the tiny bass sculptures that are gold weights from the Ashanti culture in Ghana). They may be drawn to something in a familiar style, such as a large Impressionist painting or a Rembrandt-looking portrait. They may gravitate to a favorite object in the collection, or they may be attracted by a new acquisition or a work recently installed after many years in storage. At all these stops, they... (shrink)

Agostinho da Silva, de engajado filólogo a humanista militante e crítico: itinerário seareiro em tempos de formação do Salazarismo Resumo: Este estudo reconstitui o itinerário teórico-político de Agostinho da Silva entre os anos de 1928 e 1933, sobretudo através da análise de uma série de artigos que publicou na Seara Nova, relevante revista portuguesa de “doutrina e crítica”. À luz desse recorte temático-cronológico, o viés aqui privilegiado perspectiva: 1) uma parte pouco conhecida, porém representativa, da obra de juventude de Agostinho (...) da Silva, por meio da qual podemos conhecer a atuação de um jovem e polêmico filólogo, engajado numa ofensiva de renovação dos Estudos Clássicos em Portugal, ao arrepio do establishment intelectual; 2) a gestação do humanismo militante e crítico que, doravante, se estabelecerá como fundamento decisivo do seu pensamento e ação; e 3) a institucionalização coetânea, no plano macro-político, do Estado Novo de Antônio de Oliveira Salazar. Ao chegar às considerações finais, poderá o leitor compreender a forma como os três aspectos analisados ao longo do estudo encontram-se estreitamente articulados, na medida em que quedará demonstrado como a trajetória teórica e política do jovem pensador recapitula as grandes questões daquela conjuntura portuguesa e europeia do Entre-Guerras. Nesse sentido, a história do indivíduo, aqui, é também retrato condensado de uma época. Palavras-chave: Agostinho da Silva. Seara Nova. Crítica dos intelectuais e do salazarismo. Helenismo e humanismo. Modernização europeísta. Agostinho da Silva, from engaged philologist to militant and critical humanist: a Seara Nova collaborator’s path in times of formation of Salazarism: This study reconstructs the theoretical-political path of Agostinho da Silva between the years of 1928 and 1933, mainly through the analysis of a series of articles published in Seara Nova, a relevant Portuguese journal of “doctrine and criticism”. In the light of this thematic and chronological approach, the point of view distinguished here focuses on: 1) a little-known, but representative, part of Agostinho da Silva's youth work, through which we can know the performance of a young and polemical philologist, engaged in an offensive to renew the Classical Studies in Portugal, against the intellectual establishment; 2) the gestation of the militant and critical Humanism that will henceforth be established as the decisive foundation of his thought and action; and 3) the contemporary institutionalization, at the macro-political level, of the New State led by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Upon reaching the final considerations, the reader will be able to understand how the three aspects analyzed throughout the study are closely articulated, inasmuch as it will be demonstrated how the theoretical and political trajectory of the young thinker recapitulates the major issues of that Portuguese and European context of the interwar period. In this sense, the history of the individual, here, is also the condensed portrait of an era. Keywords: Agostinho da Silva. Seara Nova. Criticism of the intellectuals and of Salazarism. Hellenism and Humanism. Europeanist modernization. Agostinho da Silva, de filólogo comprometido a humanista militante y crítico: itinerario seareiro en tiempos de formación del Salazarismo Resumen: Este estudio reconstituye el itinerario teórico-político de Agostinho da Silva entre los años 1928 y 1933, sobre todo a través del análisis de una serie de artículos que publicó en Seara Nova, una relevante revista portuguesa de “doctrina y crítica”. A la luz de este abordaje temático-cronológico, el punto de vista aquí privilegiado enfoca: 1) una parte poco conocida pero representativa de la obra de juventud de Agostinho da Silva, a través de la cual podemos conocer la actuación de un joven y polémico filólogo, comprometido en una ofensiva para renovar los Estudios Clásicos en Portugal, contra el establishment intelectual; 2) la gestación del humanismo militante y crítico que en adelante se establecerá como la base decisiva de su pensamiento y acción; y 3) la institucionalización coetánea, a nivel macropolítico, del Estado Nuevo de Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Al llegar a las consideraciones finales, el lector podrá comprender cómo se articulan estrechamente los tres aspectos analizados a lo largo del estudio, en la medida en que quedará demostrado cómo la trayectoria teórica y política del joven pensador recapitula las grandes cuestiones de aquella coyuntura portuguesa y europea de entreguerras. En este sentido, la historia del individuo, aquí, es también el retrato condensado de una época. Palabras clave: Agostinho da Silva. Seara Nova. Crítica de los intelectuales y del salazarismo. Helenismo y humanismo. Modernización europeísta. Data de registro: 20/03/2020Data de aceite: 23/09/2020. (shrink)

This article examines the little-known sculptures of pathology created by Doctor Paul Richer (1849–1933) in the 1890s for the so-called Musée Charcot at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris. Under the direction of Doctor Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), one of the founders of modern neurology, Richer was the head of the hospital's museum of pathological anatomy, as well as the Salpêtrière's resident artist. His ‘series of figural representations of the principal types of nervous pathology’ included busts of patients suffering from (...) labio-glosso-laryngeal paralysis and myopathy, as well as sculptures depicting patients with Parkinson's disease and juvenile hypothyroidism. These patient portraits were seen as objective, while also paradoxically providing an alternative to mechanical media, such as the photograph and the cast, by permitting the doctor's intervention in not only controlling and animating the sitter, but also emphasising the patient's symptoms. This was a new kind of medical specimen: the ‘scientific artwork’, as they were called by a contemporary. This phrase, far from being an oxymoron, indicates the purposive collapse of the objective (‘scientific’) and subjective (‘artistic’) binary in Richer's sculptures of pathology. Through a detailed examination of three of Richer's works, this article problematises the categories traditionally used to describe, analyse and understand medical imagery and complicates our understanding of the relationship between science and art at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Vesalius wrote nothing about the aesthetics of the anatomical illustrations found in his De humani corporis fabrica (1543). There are, however, two passages in this work that offer a starting point for an investigation into the illustration’s idealised style. In discussing the body that is best for a public dissection Vesalius says that it must be one that resembles the ‘Canon of Polycleitus’, and later, he refers to his pursuit of the historia absoluti hominis or historia of the perfect man. (...) These two passage lie at the heart of a solution to questions concerning the style of Vesalius’s illustrations. This thesis seeks to investigate the role that visual material (art) played in determining the visual character of Vesalius’s natural philosophical illustrations. In antiquity art and nature were generally thought to be opposed. This distinction was undermined in the sixteenth century as images came to play a role in acquiring and conveying knowledge about the natural world. The role that art played in determining the visual character of Vesalius’s illustrations, I argue, constitutes another facet of the undermining of the ancient opposition between art and nature that occurred in the sixteenth century. The relationship between art and nature forms the basis of my investigation into the style of Vesalius’s illustrations. I examine three separate but interrelated avenues which, I suggest, played a role in determining the style of the Fabrica illustrations. The first derives from the history of natural philosophy and medicine. I suggest that the concepts art, nature, teleology, form and beauty as they are found in Plato’s Timaeus, and Marsilio Ficino’s sixteenth­century commentary on that work, provide an epistemology and account of the body that is also found in Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, and subsequently reflected in both the text and illustrations of the Fabrica. This epistemological underpinning is entirely in keeping with the method of proportional representation of the body and associated aesthetic advocated in Polycleitus’s Canon. The second avenue concerns the role that both ancient and Renaissance artworks played in determining the style of the Fabrica illustrations. While the illustrations embody the ideal and typical form advocated in the Canon they also embellish this, and contain stylistic features derived from Hellenistic sculpture and found in High Renaissance art. I argue for specific parallels between Hellenistic sculpture, Michelangelo’s nudes in his Sistine Chapel frescos and Vesalius’s illustrations. Thirdly, I consider Renaissance artwriting and aesthetics as a source for understanding the idealised style of the Vesalian illustrations. In particular I examine Leon Battista Alberti’s tabulation of the ideal man and his aesthetic principle concinnitas. This offers a Renaissance account of beauty and the ideal that is analogous to the Canon of Polycleitus, is central to an understanding of Italian Renaissance art and aesthetics, and has a particular application to Vesalius’s illustrations and their teleological underpinnings. I suggest that contrapposto asthe expression of antithesis in art offers a theoretic parallel for the augmentation of the austere classical style found in Vesalius’s own use of contrapposto and his interest in musculature and movement. Throughout, this thesis is concerned with relationships between visual materials. I elaborate on this theme through an investigation of the influence that Vesalius’s illustrations had on a selection of anatomical illustrations that came in its wake. I construe the relationships that obtain between these illustrations as analogous to those which occur in what are termed art historical ‘movements’. (shrink)

The Sandal-Binder Aphrodite, a witty variation on Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos, is one of the most frequently reproduced sculptural types in Greco-Roman art. Created in a variety of materials throughout the Mediterranean, extant versions of this iconography show the goddess in the act of tying (or possibly untying) her sandal. Although a large number of these works of art date between the first and fourth century CE, most studies on the Sandal-Binder have approached it primarily as an expression of (...) class='Hi'>Hellenistic Greek artistic trends. The present study shifts our attention away from the cultural milieu of the Sandal-Binder’s creation to that of its reception. Two well-preserved examples—one from a house in Pompeii and the other from London—attest to the process of translating or adapting this sensual image of Aphrodite to a Roman ideological framework. In both cases, it is through the language of body adornment that this transformation is achieved: while the example from Pompeii (a marble statuette adorned with gold paint) shows the goddess wearing contemporary jewelry and clothing, the diminutive silver figurine from London is part of a fashionable hairpin that points to the dissemination of imperial hairstyles in Rome’s remotest province. By calling attention to their design and function, this essay highlights the complex polysemy of Roman Sandal-Binders and the powerful messages they communicated to a diverse audience of viewers both at the heart of the empire and in the provinces. (shrink)

In the rhetorical tradition of Late Antiquity, Socrates’ legend has a good fortune in the works of different rhetoricians and philosophers. In the following pages I am going to deal with some examples of this phaenomenon, through the works of Themistius and Julian the emperor : two intellectuals of the IV century who are, under many aspects, the exact opposites.They both try to ‘actualize’ Socrates’ figure, highlighting different aspects of the Athenian philosopher, on the grounds of their personal purposes of (...) self-advertisement. So Themistius, a skilled politician working as princeps’ advisor, sees in Socrates a symbol of the ‘politikos philosophos’, who speaks plainly in public with people of all ranks, in a simple and direct way ; for Julian, emperor and philosopher of the new Hellenism, Socrates, instead, is mainly the saviour of the souls, addressing all men towards the true knowledge of themselves and the true faith in pagan gods. These portraits are complementary and both attest the ability of Late Antique intellectuals in their imitatio/aemulatio of figures and myths of Classical Antiquity. (shrink)

Diplomacy and statuary in the Hellenistic period : concerning the decree CID IV 99 of the Pyleodelphic Amphictyony. This paper proposes a reanalysis of an Amphictyonic decree of the end of the 3rd c. BC, which, in answer to a delegation sent by Antiocheia of the Chrysaorians, that is to say Alabanda in Caria, grants the city, among other honours, the installation in the sanctuary at Delphi of a 3.60 m (12 ft) high bronze statue representing the People of (...) Antiocheia. Unusually, Antiochos III is honoured by the same decree and is granted a statue of the same height. After a study of the intersecting interests, linked to the diplomatic and military context, which explain the installation of this impressive sculptural group, original both in terms of typology and of setting, I focus on personifications of the People and their evolution. The main hypothesis concerns the creation, in Hellenistic times, beside the classical type of the bearded old man, of a young and energetic type of the People, inspired by the renewed civic iconography. Thus, a colossal statue found on Cos, whose interpretation is much disputed, could in fact be a honorific statue of the People. (shrink)

This paper proposes a general analysis of the structure and imagery of the Salmacis epigram, a late Hellenistic verse inscription recently found in Bodrum which relates the foundation of Halicarnassus and lists the achievements of the city's authors. Focusing on the first part of the poem, I argue that the epigram can be seen to trace a complex symbolic map of the city in space and time. On a first level of reference the poem's episodes of foundation are consistently (...) represented as the aitia of ritual events. Superimposed on the catalogue of foundation episodes is a catalogue of the ritual events that commemorated them, and our epigram uses this level of reference to ground its portrait of Halicarnassus in the contemporary ritual life of the polis. In this way the poem is able to locate the city in the space of cult and to inscribe the linear time of primordial origins in the recurrent present of ritual practice. On a complementary level of reference, finally, the different episodes of foundation also function as so many statements of kinship—every founder effectively ties the city to another region and another people. As a parallel to the local space of ritual, then, the combination of these statements of kinship is made to locate the city in the wider space of ethnic geography. Behind a seemingly simple catalogic form, the Salmacis epigram actually combines two levels of reference to achieve a significant and multifaceted representation of a late Hellenistic city's cultural memory. (shrink)

What is art? What counts as an aesthetic experience? Does art have to beautiful? Can one reasonably dispute about taste? What is the relation between aesthetic and moral evaluations? How to interpret a work of art? Can we learn anything from literature, film or opera? What is sentimentality? What is irony? How to think philosophically about architecture, dance, or sculpture? What makes something a great portrait? Is music representational or abstract? Why do we feel terrified when we watch a (...) horror movie even though we know it to be fictional? -/- In Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, Hans Maes discusses these and other key questions in aesthetics with ten world-leading philosophers of art: Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. -/- The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas and intellectual development. They also offer new insights into, and a deeper understanding of, contemporary issues in the philosophy of art. (shrink)