Dancing and Professional Dancers in Roman Egypt

The main aim of the study is to create a many-sided view of dancing in Roman Egypt (1st - early 4th centuries AD) and especially of the dancers who earned their living by dancing as hired performers. Even though dancers and other performers played a central part in many kinds of festivities throughout the ancient world, research on ancient professional dancers is rare and tends to rest on the ancient literature, which reflects the opinions of the elite. Documentary written sources (i.e., papyri, ostraka) the core of the present study are mentioned rather superficially, easily resulting in a stereotypical view of the dancers. This study will balance the picture of professional dancers in antiquity and of ancient dancing in a more general sense. The second aim characterizes this study as basic research: to provide a corpus of written sources from Greco-Roman Egypt on dancing and to discuss pictorial sources contemporary with the texts. The study also takes into account the theoretical discussion that centres on dancing as a nonverbal communicative mode. Dancers are seen as significant conveyors of social and cultural matters. This study shows that dancers were hired to perform especially in religious contexts, where the local associations on the village level also played an important part as the employers of the performers. These performers had a better standard of living in economic terms than the average hired worker, and dancers were better paid than other performers. In the Egyptian villages and towns, where the dancers performed and lived, the dancers do not seem to have been marginal because they were professionals or because of some ethnic or social background. However, their possible marginality may have occurred for reasons related to the practicalities of their profession (e.g., the itinerant life style). The oriental background of performers was a literary topos reflecting partly the situation in the centres of the empire, especially Rome, where many performers were of other than Roman origin. The connection of dancing, prostitution and slavery reflects the essential link between dance, body and gender: dancers are equated with such professions or socio-legal statuses where the body is the focus of attention, a commodity and a source of sensual pleasure; this dimension is clearly observable in ancient literature. According to the Egyptian documentary sources, there is no watertight evidence that professional dancers would have been engaged in prostitution and very little, if any, evidence that the disapproval of the professional dancers expressed by the ancient authors was shared by the Egyptians. From the 4th century onwards the dancers almost disappear from the documentary sources, reflecting the political and religious changes in the Mediterranean east.

Hermenéutica de la astrología greco-romana

[ES] La astrología grecorromana es un código lingüístico con signos (planetas, signos del Zodíaco), y con leyes de interconexión entre ellos (eclíptica, aspectos, casas, límites), y ha de ser valorada no sólo desde la perspectiva de su cientificidad, sino desde la de sus funciones para el individuo y la sociedad: es un conocimiento del futuro singular que afecta a la totalidad de lo implicado, y en la totalidad de sus dimensiones. Suple así el conocimiento de la ciencia antigua, que no fue capaz de incluir ni lo futuro ni lo singular. La astrología integra al individuo en la comunidad, integrándolo previamente en su universo semántico. Cosmos, mundo humano y mundo natural se armonizan totalmente.

The use of cues for attention in ancient Greek art: aspects that influence concentration in the work of art and its elements

The goal of this study is to identify cues for the cognitive process of attention in ancient Greek art, aiming to find confirmation of its possible use by ancient Greek audiences and artists. Evidence of cues that trigger attention’s psychological dispositions was searched through content analysis of image reproductions of ancient Greek sculpture and fine vase painting from the archaic to the Hellenistic period - ca. 7th -1st cent. BC. Through this analysis, it was possible to observe the presence of cues that trigger orientation to the work of art (i.e. amplification, contrast, emotional salience, simplification, symmetry), of a cue that triggers a disseminate attention to the parts of the work (i.e. distribution of elements) and of cues that activate selective attention to specific elements in the work of art (i.e. contrast of elements, salient color, central positioning of elements, composition regarding the flow of elements and significant objects). Results support the universality of those dispositions, probably connected with basic competencies that are hard-wired in the nervous system and in the cognitive processes.

Mitologia dantesca: a referência aos mitos greco-romanos na divina comédia pelo viés da (re)criação poética de Dante Alighieri

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

O rapto de Europa: uma comparação entre Ovídio e Ticiano

In Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid tells the tale of the transformation of Jupiter into a bull to seduce the Phoenician princess Europa. During Renaissance, as is well known, Western civilization fostered an intense renewal of its values under the clear influence of Greco-Roman culture. Ovid, whose fame had not ceased throughout the Middle Ages, became then even better known, and especially his poem Metamorphoses turned into a remarkable source of inspiration not only to literature but also to fine arts and their new humanistic conception. Thus, the episode of the abduction of Europa received a dramatic pictorial expression in the broad brush strokes of the Venetian master Titian Vecellio, who interpreted several classical myths in his canvases at the height of his creative maturity. There are many and obvious relationships in the verses of the ancient Latin poet and the picture of the Italian Renaissancist. In Metamorphoses, the mythical account is described in so many details and set in such an expressive poetic that Titian could take Ovid´s narrative as a model for painting “The Rape of Europa”, doing a true exercise in intersemiotic translation by interpreting verbal signs through pictorial signs.

Queerness y antigüedad greco-latina en Ralf König

Reescribir, deconstruir y resignificar el pasado de la tradición heteronormativa es una de las estrategias más usuales de la expresión de la diversidad sexual en los textos culturales. Es interesante plantear lo que ocurre con el historietista Ralf König y sus intervenciones sobre la tradición literaria y cultural de la antigüedad grecolatina clásica. Los modelos canónicos de la sexualidad son confrontados y la literatura y la tradición clásica se vuelven paródicas del binarismo y la normalidad sexual: la tematización de las relaciones intermasculinas en la antigua Grecia, los clásicos greco-latinos, la figura de Alejandro Magno y la historia del mártir san Sebastián, son todos ejemplos de tópicos y tradiciones resignificadas por König en términos queer

De Lucrecio a Borges y estaciones intermedias

Este trabajo intenta mostrar la pervivencia de Lucrecio en unos pocos momentos de la tradición: en el reemplazo de la religión grecolatina por la cristiana, en la renovada convivencia de ambas creencias a partir del Humanismo (con su repercusión en la pintura del Renacimiento), y su reaparición, explícita o silente, en la producción de Jorge Luis Borges

De Lucrecio a Borges y estaciones intermedias

Este trabajo intenta mostrar la pervivencia de Lucrecio en unos pocos momentos de la tradición: en el reemplazo de la religión grecolatina por la cristiana, en la renovada convivencia de ambas creencias a partir del Humanismo (con su repercusión en la pintura del Renacimiento), y su reaparición, explícita o silente, en la producción de Jorge Luis Borges

Queerness y antigüedad greco-latina en Ralf König

Reescribir, deconstruir y resignificar el pasado de la tradición heteronormativa es una de las estrategias más usuales de la expresión de la diversidad sexual en los textos culturales. Es interesante plantear lo que ocurre con el historietista Ralf König y sus intervenciones sobre la tradición literaria y cultural de la antigüedad grecolatina clásica. Los modelos canónicos de la sexualidad son confrontados y la literatura y la tradición clásica se vuelven paródicas del binarismo y la normalidad sexual: la tematización de las relaciones intermasculinas en la antigua Grecia, los clásicos greco-latinos, la figura de Alejandro Magno y la historia del mártir san Sebastián, son todos ejemplos de tópicos y tradiciones resignificadas por König en términos queer

Queerness y antigüedad greco-latina en Ralf König

Reescribir, deconstruir y resignificar el pasado de la tradición heteronormativa es una de las estrategias más usuales de la expresión de la diversidad sexual en los textos culturales. Es interesante plantear lo que ocurre con el historietista Ralf König y sus intervenciones sobre la tradición literaria y cultural de la antigüedad grecolatina clásica. Los modelos canónicos de la sexualidad son confrontados y la literatura y la tradición clásica se vuelven paródicas del binarismo y la normalidad sexual: la tematización de las relaciones intermasculinas en la antigua Grecia, los clásicos greco-latinos, la figura de Alejandro Magno y la historia del mártir san Sebastián, son todos ejemplos de tópicos y tradiciones resignificadas por König en términos queer

De Lucrecio a Borges y estaciones intermedias

Este trabajo intenta mostrar la pervivencia de Lucrecio en unos pocos momentos de la tradición: en el reemplazo de la religión grecolatina por la cristiana, en la renovada convivencia de ambas creencias a partir del Humanismo (con su repercusión en la pintura del Renacimiento), y su reaparición, explícita o silente, en la producción de Jorge Luis Borges

Roman sculpture from Augustus to Constantine,

Index.

Descriptive catalogue of the casts from Greek and Roman sculpture.

Mode of access: Internet.

Graeco-Roman institutions, from antievolutionist points of view ... four lectures delivered before the University of Oxford ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Catalogue of the Corbett collection of casts from Greek and Roman sculpture.

Introduction by Richard Norton.