Ancient History pamphlets

A collection of miscellaneous pamphlets.

Globalizing the Sculptural Landscapes of the Sarapis and Isis Cults in Hellenistic and Roman Greece

“Globalizing the Sculptural Landscape of Isis and Sarapis Cults in Roman Greece,” asks questions of cross-cultural exchange and viewership of sculptural assemblages set up in sanctuaries to the Egyptian gods. Focusing on cognitive dissonance, cultural imagining, and manipulations of time and space, I theorize ancient globalization as a set of loosely related processes that shifted a community's connections with place. My case studies range from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, including sanctuaries at Rhodes, Thessaloniki, Dion, Marathon, Gortyna, and Delos. At these sites, devotees combined mainstream Greco-Roman sculptures, Egyptian imports, and locally produced imitations of Egyptian artifacts. In the last case, local sculptors represented Egyptian subjects with Greco-Roman naturalistic styles, creating an exoticized visual ideal that had both local and global resonance. My dissertation argues that the sculptural assemblages set up in Egyptian sanctuaries allowed each community to construct complex narratives about the nature of the Egyptian gods. Further, these images participated in a form of globalization that motivated local communities to adopt foreign gods and reinterpret them to suit local needs.

I begin my dissertation by examining how Isis and Sarapis were represented in Greece. My first chapter focuses on single statues of Egyptian gods, describing their iconographies and stylistic tendencies through examples from Corinth and Gortyna. By comparing Greek examples with images of Sarapis, Isis, and Harpokrates from around the Mediterranean, I demonstrate that Greek communities relied on globally available visual tropes rather than creating site or region-specific interpretations. In the next section, I examine what other sources viewers drew upon to inform their experiences of Egyptian sculpture. In Chapter 3, I survey the textual evidence for Isiac cult practice in Greece as a way to reconstruct devotees’ expectations of sculptures in sanctuary contexts. At the core of this analysis are Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, which offer a Greek perspective on the cult’s theology. These literary works rely on a tradition of aretalogical inscriptions—long hymns produced from roughly the late 4th century B.C.E. into the 4th century C.E. that describe the expansive syncretistic powers of Isis, Sarapis, and Harpokrates. This chapter argues that the textual evidence suggests that devotees may have expected their images to be especially miraculous and likely to intervene on their behalf, particularly when involved in ritual activity inside the sanctuary.

In the final two chapters, I consider sculptural programs and ritual activity in concert with sanctuary architecture. My fourth chapter focuses on sanctuaries where large amounts of sculpture were found in underground water crypts: Thessaloniki and Rhodes. These groups of statues can be connected to a particular sanctuary space, but their precise display contexts are not known. By reading these images together, I argue that local communities used these globally available images to construct new interpretations of these gods, ones that explored the complex intersections of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman identities in a globalized Mediterranean. My final chapter explores the Egyptian sanctuary at Marathon, a site where exceptional preservation allows us to study how viewers would have experienced images in architectural space. Using the Isiac visuality established in Chapter 3, I reconstruct the viewer's experience, arguing that the patron, Herodes Atticus, intended his viewer to inform his experience with the complex theology of Middle Platonism and prevailing elite attitudes about Roman imperialism.

Throughout my dissertation, I diverge from traditional approaches to culture change that center on the concepts of Romanization and identity. In order to access local experiences of globalization, I examine viewership on a micro-scale. I argue that viewers brought their concerns about culture change into dialogue with elements of cult, social status, art, and text to create new interpretations of Roman sculpture sensitive to the challenges of a highly connected Mediterranean world. In turn, these transcultural perspectives motivated Isiac devotees to create assemblages that combined elements from multiple cultures. These expansive attitudes also inspired Isiac devotees to commission exoticized images that brought together disparate cultures and styles in an eclectic manner that mirrored the haphazard way that travel brought change to the Mediterranean world. My dissertation thus offers a more theoretically rigorous way of modeling culture change in antiquity that recognizes local communities’ agency in producing their cultural landscapes, reconciling some of the problems of scale that have plagued earlier approaches to provincial Roman art.

These case studies demonstrate that cultural anxieties played a key role in how viewers experienced artistic imagery in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. This dissertation thus offers a new component in our understanding of ancient visuality, and, in turn, a better way to analyze how local communities dealt with the rise of connectivity and globalization.

Commandeering Aesop’s Bamboo Canon: A 19th Century Confederacy of Creole Fugitive Fables

In my thesis, “Commandeering Aesop’s Bamboo Canon: A 19th Century Confederacy of Creole Fugitive Fables,” I ask and answer the ‘Who? What? Where? When? Why?” of Creole Literature using the 19th century production of Aesopian fables as clues to resolve a set of linguistic, historical, literary, and geographical enigmas pertaining the ‘birth-place(s)’ of Creolophone Literatures in the Caribbean Sea, North and South America, as well as the Indian Ocean. Focusing on the fables in Martinique (1846), Reunion Island (1826), and Mauritius (1822), my thesis should read be as an attempt capture the links between these islands through the creation of a particular archive defined as a cartulary-chronicle, a diplomatic codex, or simply a map in which I chart and trace the flight of the founding documents relating to the lives of the individual authors, editors, and printers in order to illustrate the articulation of a formal and informal confederation that enabled the global and local institutional promotion of Creole Literature. While I integrate various genres and multi-polar networks between the authors of this 19th century canon comprised of sacred and secular texts such as proclamations, catechisms, and proverbs, the principle literary genre charted in my thesis are collections of fables inspired by French 17th century French Classical fabulist, Jean de la Fontaine. Often described as the ‘matrix’ of Creolophone Literature, these blues and fables constitute the base of the canon, and are usually described as either ‘translated,’ ‘adapted,’ and even ‘cross-dressed’ into Creole in all of the French Creolophone spaces. My documentation of their transnational sprouting offers proof of an opaque canonical formation of Creole popular literature. By constituting this archive, I emphasize the fact that despite 200 years of critical reception and major developments and discoveries on behalf of Creole language pedagogues, literary scholars, linguists, historians, librarians, archivist, and museum curators, up until now not only have none have curated this literature as a formal canon. I also offer new empirical evidence in order to try and solve the enigma of “How?” the fables materially circulated between the islands, and seek to come to terms with the anonymous nature of the texts, some of which were published under pseudonyms. I argue that part of the confusion on the part of scholars has been the result of being willfully taken by surprise or defrauded by the authors, or ‘bamboozled’ as I put it. The major paradigmatic shift in my thesis is that while I acknowledge La Fontaine as the base of this literary canon, I ultimately bypass him to trace the ancient literary genealogy of fables to the infamous Aesop the Phrygian, whose biography – the first of a slave in the history of the world – and subsequent use of fables reflects a ‘hidden transcript’ of ‘masked political critique’ between ‘master and slave classes’ in the 4th Century B.C.E. Greece.

This archive draws on, connects and critiques the methodologies of several disciplinary fields. I use post-colonial literary studies to map the literary genealogies Aesop; use a comparative historical approach to the abolitions of slavery in both the 19th century Caribbean and the Indian Ocean; and chart the early appearance of folk music in early colonial societies through Musicology and Performance Studies. Through the use of Sociolinguistics and theories of language revival, ecology, and change, I develop an approach of ‘reflexive Creolistics’ that I ultimately hope will offer new educational opportunities to Creole speakers. While it is my desire that this archive serves linguists, book collectors, and historians for further scientific inquiry into the innate international nature of Creole language, I also hope that this innovative material defense and illustration of Creole Literature will transform the consciousness of Creolophones (native and non-native) who too remain ‘bamboozled’ by the archive. My goal is to erase the ‘unthinkability’ of the existence of this ancient maritime creole literary canon from the collective cultural imaginary of readers around the globe.

La exploración del litoral atlántico norteafricano según el periplo de Hannón de Cartago

El periplo de Hannón, frente a las propuestas que lo interpretan como una obra literaria, creemos que recoge un periplo auténtico, que sólo alcanzó cabo Juby y algunas de las Islas Canarias. Las refundaciones cartaginesas fueron todas en la Mauretania fértil, en los 7 primeros días de la expedición. Desde el islote de Kérne, en la expedición primó una primera exploración de evaluación, indicativo de que se trataba de apenas 2 o 3 barcos, con una tripulación limitada, que evitaban enfrentamientos con la población local. Los intérpretes Lixítai parecen conocer todos los puntos explorados, el río Chrétes, los etíopes del Alto Atlas costero, el gran golfo caluroso que finalizaba en el Hespérou Kéras, el volcán Theôn Óchema, o las gentes salvajes que denominaban Goríllai. Probablemente la mayor sorpresa fuese encontrar un volcán activo, emitiendo lava, que pudo ser la razón última para redactar este periplo. La falta de agua, alimentos y caza como razón para finalizar la expedición exploratoria sólo es comprensible en un trayecto corto que alcanzó hasta el inicio del desierto del Sahara. Otro tanto sucede con la ausencia de ríos importantes al Sur del río Chrétes, una clara prueba de que no se alcanzaron latitudes ecuatoriales y que los barcos se fueron alejando de la costa norteafricana.

Iltirta y Auso, dos "capitales" regionales en al Hispania republicana

Estudio sobre el papel desempeñado por las ciudades ibéricas de Iltirta y Auso en la primera organización territorial romana de Hispania, en especial durante el siglo II a. de C. Ambos fueron importantes centros de carácter regional; el análisis de los contextos grecoromanos, la numismática y los escasos restos arqueológicos conocidos así lo confirman. En realidad, el proceso fue la continuación de una realidad ya preexistente con anterioridad a la conquista romana.

Instalaciones oleícolas y vinícolas estudiadas en el marco del Proyecto Ager Tarraconensis (PAT)

Dentro del Proyecto Ager Tarraconensis, se han estudiado en el Camp de Tarragona 19 yacimientos con indicios de instalaciones de producción de aceite o vino, que se centran especialmente entre los siglos I a.C. y II d.C. También se han estudiado 22 yacimientos con indicios de alfarería, en siete de los cuales se conoce la producción de ánforas vinarias. El hallazgo de diversas marcas de alfarero dónde identificamos el nombre de M. Clodius Martialis apunta hacia una rica familia de la elite de Tarraco, con la que se han relacionado cuatro yacimientos y quizás un quinto. Entre la época de Augusto y el siglo III, el vino se confirma como el producto principal de una agricultura desarrollada dentro del sistema de la villa, enfocada al mercado de ultramar. El aceite se debió producir para el consumo local. Esta región no volvió a potenciar la producción de vino a nivel de gran negocio de ámbito internacional hasta el siglo XVIII, con el cual se establece una comparación.

L'évolution de la représentation des Perses Sassanides dans les sources écrites de l'Antiquité tardive, d'Ammien Marcellin à Procope de Césarée.

Ce mémoire explore le lien entre les relations politiques entretenues par l’empire romain et le royaume sassanide et la représentation que faisaient des Perses les auteurs de l’antiquité tardive. Une tradition littéraire défavorable aux orientaux est en effet perceptible tout au long de l’antiquité : les Perses, notamment, sont ainsi cruels, lâches, efféminés, paresseux et perfides. Ces topoi, dont les racines se retrouvent dès le 5e siècle avant J.-C., évoluent-ils à la fin de l’antiquité, lorsque la puissance des Sassanides rivalise avec celle des empereurs? S’appuyant sur les travaux des dernières années sur l’altérité et sur l’ethnographie antique, ce mémoire s’efforce d’autre part de mieux comprendre les Romains en eux-mêmes en faisant l’analyse de leur rapport à leurs voisins.

As funções do coro na comédia de Aristófanes

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

O canto dos helenos: poesia e performance

This study presents a brief reflection on the genesis of literary genres in Ancient Greece. It is intended here, in the first place, take us off this "comfort zone" when we talk about "Greek literature" in antiquity, at least from the period of Homer until the fifth century. B.C. , moment when, in fact, the writing has become stable not only in the continent but spreads out reaching the Italian peninsula and generating what we have today as the Roman alphabet. Therefore, we examine some terms that appear to be so clear for us which termed other doings, such as poetry, poem, among others. We also examine issues concerning the epic, lyrical and dramatic poetry.

La via Emilia tra Rimini e Forlì. Ruolo e immagine della strada

Abstract Il tema delle infrastrutture, intese come parte dell’architettura dello spazio urbano e del territorio, assume un ruolo centrale in molti progetti contemporanei e costituisce la ragione di questa ricerca. E’ preso in esame, in particolare, il tracciato extraurbano della via Emilia, antica strada consolare romana la cui definizione risale al II sec. a.C., nel tratto compreso tra le città di Rimini e Forlì. Studiare la strada nel suo rapporto con il territorio locale ha significato in primo luogo prendere in considerazione la via Emilia in quanto manufatto, ma anche in quanto percorso che si compie nel tempo. Si è dunque cercato di mostrare come, in parallelo all’evoluzione della sua sezione e della geometria del suo tracciato, sia cambiata anche la sua fruizione, e come si sia evoluto il modo in cui la strada viene “misurata”, denominata e gestita. All’interno di una riflessione critica sulla forma e sul ruolo della strada nel corso dei secoli la Tesi rilegge il territorio nella sua dimensione di “palinsesto”, riconoscendo e isolando alcuni momenti in cui la via Emilia ha assunto un valore “simbolico” che rimanda alla Roma imperiale. La perdita del significato via Emilia, intesa come elemento di “costruzione” del territorio, ha origine con il processo di urbanizzazione diffusa che ha investito il territorio extraurbano a partire dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale. La condizione attuale della strada, sempre più congestionata dal traffico veicolare, costituisce la premesse per una riflessione sul futuro della sua forma e degli insediamenti che attraversa. La strategia proposta dagli Enti locali che prevede il raddoppio della strada, con la costruzione della via Emilia Bis, non garantisce solo un potenziamento infrastrutturale ma rappresenta l’occasione per sottrarre al tracciato attuale la funzione di principale asse di comunicazione extraurbana. La via Emilia potrebbe così recuperare il ruolo di itinerario narrativo, attraverso la configurazione dei suoi spazi collettivi, l’architettura dei suoi edifici, il significato dei suoi monumenti, e diventare spazio privilegiato di relazione e di aggregazione. The theme of urban infrastructures, thought as part of the design of urban space and territory, has a central role in several contemporary projects and is the reason of this research. The object of the study is the extra urban route of the via Emilia, an ancient roman road which has been defined in the II century b. C., in its stretch between the cities of Rimini and Forlì. Studying the road in its relationship with the local environment has meant first of all considering the via Emilia as an “artefact” but also as a path that takes place over time. The aim of this research was also to demonstrate how its fruition has changed together with the evolution of the section and geometry of the route, and how the road itself is measured, named and managed. Within a critical approach on the shape and on the role played by the road through the centuries, this Essay reinterprets the territory in its dimension of “palimpsest”, identifying and isolating some periods of time when the via Emilia assumed a symbolic value which recalls the Imperial Rome. The loss of the meaning of the via Emilia, intended as an element that “constitutes” the territory originates from a process of diffused urbanization, which spread in the extra urban environment from the end of the second world war. The actual condition of the road, more and more congested by traffic, is the premise of a reflection about the future of its shape and of the settlements alongside. The strategy proposed by the local authorities, that foresees to double the size of the road, building the via Emilia Bis, not only guarantees an infrastructural enhancement but also it represents an opportunity to take off from the road itself the current function of being the principal axis of extra urban connection. In this way the via Emilia could regain its role as a narrative itinerary, through the configuration of its public spaces, the architecture of its buildings, the meaning of its monuments, and then become a privileged space of relationship and aggregation.

Celti e Reti tra V e I sec. a.C. Oggetti tipo LaTène all'interno della cerchia culturale Fritzens-Sanzeno (arco alpino centro-orientale)

The study of the objects LaTène type found in middle-eastern alpine region (Trentino Alto Adige-Südtirol, Engadina, North Tirol, Voralberg and Villach basin) is aimed to a better comprehension of the complex net of relationships established among the Celts, settled both in the central Europe territories and, since the IV century b.C., in the Po Plain, and the local populations. The ancient authors, who called the inhabitants of this area Raeti, propose for this territory the usual pattern according to which, the population of a region was formed consequently to a migration or was caused by the hunting of pre-existing peoples. The archaeologists, in the last thirty years, recognized a cultural facies typical of the middle-eastern alpine territory during the second Iron Age, and defined that as Fritzens-Sanzeno culture (from the sites of Fritzens, Inn valley, and Sanzeno, Non Valley). The so-called Fritzens-Sanzeno culture spread out without breaks from the material culture of the final Bronze Age and the first Iron Age. This local substratum, characterized by a ceramic repertoire strongly standardized, by peculiar architectural solutions and by a particular typology of rural sacred places (Brandopferplätze), accepted, above all during the second Iron Age, the strong influences coming from the Etruscan world and from the Celtic one (evident in the presence of objects of ornament, of glass artefacts, of elements of the weaponry and of coins). The objects LaTène type become, with different degrees of reliability, important markers of the relationships existing between the Celts and the Raeti, although the ways of interaction (cultural influence, people's movements, commercial exchanges, gifts among élites etc.) is not still clear. The revision of published data and the study of unpublished materials allows to define a rich and articulated picture both to chronological level and to territorial one.

Ex occulto carpere agmen: la guerriglia antiromana in Britannia e in Giudea

Scopo di questo lavoro è quello di analizzare le componenti tattiche, strategiche e sociali della guerriglia antiromana in Britannia e in Giudea, in un periodo che va dal I secolo a. C. al III secolo d. C., con l'obiettivo di mettere in luce la differente efficacia delle tattiche non ortodosse rispetto a quelle convenzionali; e di analizzare le risposte teoriche ed empiriche concepite dai Romani per affrontare questa forma di lotta. La tesi è stata articolata nel modo seguente: una prima parte analizza gli aspetti tattici, strategici e sociali della guerriglia e della controguerriglia, anche attraverso il metodo comparativo, mettendo cioè a confronto alcuni dei principali testi sulla guerra non convenzionale redatti in epoche e contesti diversi, dai quali si è cercato di delle costanti potenzialmente applicabili a qualsiasi periodo storico e a qualsiasi area geografica. Nella seconda parte si cerca di applicare tali costanti alla realtà storico – sociale dell'impero romano. Particolare attenzione è stata riservata al rapporto tra la mentalità romana, basata sul concetto di bellum iustum, e le tattiche non ortodosse. La terza e la quarta parte analizzano la resistenza antiromana in Britannia e in Giudea, mettendone in luce tutti gli aspetti, in particolare quelli legati alla guerriglia rurale, a quella urbana, al terrorismo, all'evoluzione della guerriglia da guerra per bande a guerra convenzionale e alla controguerriglia. La scelta di queste due province non è casuale. In province così lontane e diverse tra loro, Roma inviò spesso gli stessi generali esperti di controguerriglia. Questo particolare permette di notare la presenza, a Roma, di una grand strategy che, consapevole del fenomeno della guerriglia, ne affidò la repressione agli stessi generali, specialisti della controguerriglia, non esitando a spostarli, in caso di necessità, da un capo all'altro dell'impero.

Types of Jewish-Palestinian piety : from 70 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. ; the ancient pious men

by Adolph Büchler

Twentieth Century Delta δC Variability in Surface Water Dissolved Inorganic Carbon Recorded by Coralline Algae in the Northern North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea

The oxygen isotopic composition and Mg/Ca ratios in the skeletons of long-lived coralline algae record ambient seawater temperature over time. Similarly, the carbon isotopic composition in the skeletons record delta(13)C values of ambient seawater dissolved inorganic carbon. Here, we measured delta(13)C in the coralline alga Clathromorphum nereostratum to test the feasibility of reconstructing the intrusion of anthropogenic CO(2) into the northern North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. The delta(13)C was measured in the high Mgcalcite skeleton of three C. nereostratum specimens from two islands 500 km apart in the Aleutian archipelago. In the records spanning 1887 to 2003, the average decadal rate of decline in delta(13)C values increased from 0.03% yr(-1) in the 1960s to 0.095% yr(-1) in the 1990s, which was higher than expected due to solely the delta(13)C-Suess effect. Deeper water in this region exhibits higher concentrations of CO(2) and low delta(13)C values. Transport of deeper water into surface water (i.e., upwelling) increases when the Aleutian Low is intensified. We hypothesized that the acceleration of the delta(13)C decline may result from increased upwelling from the 1960s to 1990s, which in turn was driven by increased intensity of the Aleutian Low. Detrended delta(13)C records also varied on 4-7 year and bidecadal timescales supporting an atmospheric teleconnection of tropical climate patterns to the northern North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea manifested as changes in upwelling.