Excursions Into Greek And Roman Imagery

This book provides an enquiry into the distinguishing traits of Greek and Roman figural imagery. A detailed analysis of a wide range of material conveys an understanding of the figural imagery of classical antiquity as a whole, counterbalancing studies conducted on single genres. Through in-depth studies of six major production categories—Greek painted pottery, Roman decorated walls, Greek gravestones, Roman sarcophagi, Greek and Roman official sculpture, and Greek and Roman coins—the reader gains insights into the making of classical figural imagery. The images are explored within their contextual frameworks, paying attention to both functional purposes and pictorial traditions. Image–viewer relations offer a perspective that is maintained across the chapters. The bottom-up approach and the many genres of imagery discussed provide the basis for an extensive synthesis. Lavishly illustrated with over 100 images, Excursions into Greek and Roman Imagery provides a valuable resource for students of classical antiquity and history of art. The book also offers classical scholars, museum curators and others interested in classical art a fresh approach to the figural imagery of antiquity.

The Language of Objects sheds new light on the sub-genre of Greek descriptive epigram, focusing on deictic reference as a springboard to understand three different approaches to the materiality of texts: imagination-oriented deixis, pointing to referents conjured in the reader’s mind; ocular deixis, addressing perceivable referents; displaced deixis, underscoring the subjective response of readers/viewers. Uniquely combining overlooked verse-inscriptions and well-known literary and inscribed texts, which are freshly re-examined through a cognitive lens, this volume explores the evolution of deixis in descriptive epigrams dating from the pre-Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. With its original analysis, the book pushes forward the study of Greek epigram and current understanding of deixis in ancient poetry.

The work of Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford from 1987 to 2006, has been highly distinctive for the consistency of its engagement with contemporary society. Taking Richard Harries' contributions as their inspiration, key figures, each of them major commentators on areas of pressing contemporary concern, probe important questions which people are asking about a range of social issues, including arms and violence, the role of the media in public life, spirituality, multifaith Britain, sex, capitalism, the second chamber, and medical ethics, and make suggestive comments about the part which the Church might play.

"Images of episodes from Greek mythology are widespread in Roman art, appearing in sculptural groups, mosaics, paintings and reliefs. They attest to Rome's enduring fascination with Greek culture, and its desire to absorb and reframe that culture for new ends. This book provides a comprehensive account of the meanings of Greek myth across the spectrum of Roman art, including public, domestic and funerary contexts. It argues that myths, in addition to functioning as signifiers of a patron's education or paideia, played an important role as rhetorical and didactic exempla. The changing use of mythological imagery in domestic and funerary art in particular reveals an important shift in Roman values and senses of identity across the period of the first two centuries AD, and in the ways that Greek culture was turned to serve Roman values"--

"Provides a comprehensive introduction to this important genre, exploring such subjects as the role of the mythological images in everyday life of the time, the messages they convey about the Romans' view of themselves, and the reception of the sarcophagi in later European art and art history."--Publisher's website